Google, Vodafone deepen AI ties across Europe, Africa

Britain's Vodafone said on Tuesday it has deepened its strategic partnership with Alphabet's Google in a ten-year, billion dollar plus deal that will bring the U.S. tech giant's new generative AI-powered devices to customers across Europe and Africa.

Vodafone said it would expand access to Google's artificial intelligence-powered Pixel devices with its 5G network in Europe and would continue promoting the Android ecosystem.

Vodafone said that this renewed partnership will bring storage, security, and AI assistance to Vodafone’s customers in 15 countries, as well as its partners in an additional 45 markets worldwide, while Google will use Vodafone’s fixed and mobile connectivity services to improve workforce productivity.

The company also said that as a part of this partnership, the two companies will work towards enhancing Vodafone TV using Google Cloud’s advanced gen AI capabilities to provide additional content discovery features, rewards, and offers, as well as content monetization with Google Ad Manager to deliver a better ads experience. The two companies will also work towards exploring a more deeply-integrated YouTube experience across Vodafone TV devices.

"Our expanded partnership with Vodafone will help bring our most advanced AI products and services, including our Gemini models, to more people across Europe and Africa,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said on the occasion. 

Global technology companies are competing to lure customers to upgrade their phones using new generative AI features, with the likes of Apple , Google and Samsung offering a suite of visual, text and audio features powered by AI.

Vodafone will offer Google One AI Premium subscription plans, which include Gemini Advanced, in certain countries by 2025, it said.

Vodafone will also use Google Cloud's enterprise-ready AI platform as part of the expanded partnership.

Google is in an AI race with companies such as OpenAI, which is backed by the likes of Microsoft and NVIDIA.