- Graphiant CEO Ali Shaikh said carriers are moving fast to take advantage of AI, defying their history of slow movement
- AI gives carriers compelling opportunity to move beyond commodity connectivity
- Graphiant provides a network-as-a-service platform to enable AI and post-quantum cryptography
Telcos are moving surprisingly fast as AI gives them a rare opportunity to expand beyond commodity connectivity, Graphiant CEO Ali Shaikh said.
Shaikh, who was named CEO of the network-as-a-service platform provider in October after serving as chief product officer, said the change in carrier behavior caught him off guard.
"If you'd asked me when we were starting this company, would the telcos move as fast as I see them moving, at that time, I would have said probably not," Shaikh said in an interview. "Our experience in the last 12 months has been that they're moving pretty aggressively because they have a compelling event in the market that they can use to increase their margins — that event being AI."
Why are telcos in a hurry?
Shaikh pointed to two forces pushing carriers off the sidelines. The first is, obviously, AI. The second is post-quantum cryptography, replacing encryption that quantum computers are expected to break. Google puts "Q-day," the day quantum computers overpower encryption, around 2028, the U.S. government around 2030 and Cloudflare at 2029.
The AI opportunity divides between "AI for networking" — using agents and analytics to automate operations — and "networking for AI" — using the network to enable AI, Shaikh said. IP backbones built for the original internet on BGP and MPLS still run on manual, box-by-box configuration, and a carrier circuit can take six months to provision, Shaikh said. Graphiant accelerates the process.
"AI doesn't have six months to wait for a circuit," Shaikh said. Networks must become "more ephemeral, more programmatic" and carry context in the network layer itself — whether traffic comes from a human or an AI agent, what service level applies and which jurisdiction, such as HIPAA or PCI, governs the data, he said.
That shift is what carriers now see as a premium product rather than a compliance cost.
"Now we have non-human beings consuming the network, and we have to slice them and control that in a very specific way," he said. Networks need to be designed for both "people and not-people."
Graphiant's pitch
Graphiant is a network-as-a-service company that provides a software platform that enables operators, governments and enterprises to modernize aging IP backbones carrying internet traffic, providing quantum cryptographic protection and the flexibility to enable AI. Enterprises buy connectivity on demand instead of stitching together leased lines and hardware. Graphiant customers include AT&T, Sony Pictures, Canva and Peraton.
Graphiant rebuilt the protocol stack at the IP layer and rewrote its routing software in Rust, a memory-safe language meant to reduce security vulnerabilities, Shaikh said.
"It's not just something that can be replicated via vibe coding or anything of the sort," Shaikh said. "This is fundamental infrastructure."
Enterprise AI adoption remains slow and risk-averse, which is exactly why carriers see an opening to sell customers a safeguarded path for data headed to models from OpenAI or Anthropic, Shaikh said.
Company Founder Khalid Raza, now president and chief strategy officer, co-founded SD-WAN pioneer Viptela, which Cisco bought for $610 million in 2017, and launched Graphiant to look beyond SD-WAN in 2020.
Shaikh named one rival above the rest: Cisco. Graphiant's main commercial wedge against Cisco is licensing, Shaikh said. Graphiant charges by network capacity instead of per user, feature, box or port — a model he said better fits a world where a customer might spin up a million AI agents. "Why would I artificially restrict that?" he said, calling the incumbent approach "death by license."
Graphiant employs roughly 50 people, and Shaikh said it has raised close to $120 million cumulatively. The company has disclosed a $62 million Series B and, in May 2025, a $19 million extension co-led by Aramco's Wa'ed Ventures and stc's Tali Ventures, part of a Saudi push that includes a regional headquarters in Riyadh and a stc rollout of Graphiant services. Backers include Sequoia Capital, Two Bear Capital and IAG Capital.
What's the endgame? The nature of critical infrastructure makes acquisition a likely option. Does that mean Shaikh would end up going back to work for Cisco? "I'd like to have more options than just that," he said.
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