Intelligence moves down the stack at Mobile World Congress

With moonwalking robots, a smartphone with a built‑in lighter and AI pets that chirped in response to attendees, last week’s Mobile World Congress, the largest mobile and wireless conference held annually in Barcelona, was a good reminder that the future of tech can be as quirky as it is ambitious.

But beneath the spectacle, MWC emphasized that intelligence is migrating down the stack in three distinct areas: autonomous networks, quantum‑ready telecom infrastructure and smartphones as the front door to everyday agentic AI.

“Last year, agentic AI was the buzzword,” said Rahul Kumar, Senior Partner and Vice President for Telco and Media at IBM, from the floor at MWC. “This year, it’s all about ‘autonomous networks.’” These communications networks use AI and automation to run, manage and self-correct themselves automatically, with little to no human intervention.

But Kumar was quick to stress that it’s not autonomous networks for the sake of automation. “It must advance toward some business outcomes,” he said. “In the case of the telco network, that could be cost [reduction], flexibility, greater response times, but also monetization and revenue growth.”

The quantum “chandelier” in IBM’s booth also drew attention, said Kumar. With its wedding cake-like tiers, golden accents and ribbons of cabling, the grand, futuristic structure models the cryogenic technology that cools a quantum computer chip (the chip itself is slightly larger than a fingernail). It’s a “visual and experiential representation of how quantum computing is moving from theory to enterprise reality,” said Kumar.

The convergence of quantum and telecom was a focus for Mark Hughes, Global Managing Partner for Cybersecurity Services at IBM, who spoke at MWC about how organizations must begin preparing now for a world where mature enough quantum computers might be used by bad actors to break today’s encryption. “The first thing to do is establish, as an executive, what cryptography you actually have running in your organization,” Hughes said. He explained how telecom operators can use quantum‑resistant algorithms and “quantum‑safe shells” to protect their infrastructure.

Meanwhile, exhibits large and small across MWC demonstrated how the smartphone is becoming the front door to agentic intelligence—that is, where agentic assistance meets real life. TM Roh, who oversees Samsung’s mobile business, described the company’s on-device intelligence, Galaxy AI, as a layer that “understands intent, anticipates needs and acts on behalf of users” across apps, wearables and emerging form factors.

Samsung also announced that it is expanding its agentic AI strategy beyond consumer devices and into intelligent infrastructure. With plans to transition global manufacturing operations into entirely “AI-driven factories” by 2030, Samsung is bringing together AI agents, digital twin simulations and real-time data analysis to optimize production, strengthen quality control and enhance operational resilience.

As the lights dimmed on the demos and the crowds thinned in Barcelona, the signal from Mobile World Congress was clear: the intelligence is migrating down the stack—into networks, into security and into the phone in your pocket.