Monetizing AI-RAN: Turning Next-Generation Networks into AI-Powered Revenue

Ryuji Wakikawa is Senior Vice President and CTO at SoftBank Corp., leading the company’s technology strategy for the AI-native network era. 

His work spans 5G Advanced, 6G, AI-RAN, Open RAN, NTN, HAPS, quantum technologies, autonomous mobility, and Physical AI, with a focus on transforming telecom infrastructure into intelligent, distributed social infrastructure. 

He also contributes to global open innovation through the O-RAN ALLIANCE and LF Networking, while continuing academic engagement as a Project Professor at Keio University.

Soma evangelizes AI adoption into telecoms and 5G wireless communications. He's a successful serial intrapreneur and original thinker with more than 20 years in the software and high-tech industry. He's a product leader with full product life cycle experience, from product strategy to R&D. Soma has incubated and launched multiple software products globally for large corporations, and owns 11 patents.

Pallavi Mahajan is a globally recognized technology and business leader driving the convergence of AI, advanced computing and intelligent networking. From architecting the early Internet to scaling high performance computing, edge cloud and AI platforms, she has consistently transformed breakthroughs into scalable business models - leveraging open ecosystems, strategic partnerships and disciplined execution to deliver industry defining shifts.

A disruptor and innovator at heart, Pallavi has a sharp instinct for what’s next – and how to turn it into reality.

Today, as Chief Technology and AI Officer, Pallavi sets the company’s long term technology roadmap, shapes portfolio strategy and connects frontier research directly to commercial execution, driving sustainable growth and market leadership. She leads central platform teams to build scalable foundations for innovation and drives strategic partnerships across the global technology ecosystem to extend Nokia’s external impact. Her focus is on advancing AI and emerging technologies to unlock new business models and position Nokia at the centre of the digital economy.

She is driving the shift to AI native networks - networks that do more than connect intelligence, but continuously learn, adapt and optimise through it. Working across Bell Labs and the global technology ecosystem, she is translating foundational science into open platforms, scalable products and real world impact, accelerating the journey from breakthrough research to industry wide adoption.

Steve is a British-born communications analyst, and the anchor of FNTV. His career began as a technology journalist with McGraw-Hill in the 1980s, and he later founded Light Reading in 2000, an online media network focusing on telecommunications news, research and security. He sold Light Reading to UBM in 2005 for $33 million, bought it back in 2014 for significantly less, and resold it to Informa PLC two years later for $67 million. Awarded an MBE in 2018, he has authored three technology books and three works of fiction. This year, Steve won the 2026 Jessie H. Neal Award for Best Commentary: Op-Eds — presented by the American business press industry — his seventh Neal Award, but his first in 28 years, which is either a testament to the industry’s declining standards or proof that Steve is now extremely old. Steve splits his time between the U.S. and the U.K. with his three sons.