- AT&T distances itself from AI bubble fears, reporting ROI and company-wide gains
- The company credits executive backing, risk-team collaboration, and a disciplined ROI focus for its success
- AT&T’s AI tools like Ask AT&T and AI Fueled Coding show large-scale adoption and practical value across operations
AT&T's Andy Markus has seen the reports that AI is a bubble on the verge of collapse. But that's not the case at AT&T, which has seen its AI investments pay off, he says.
In recent weeks, we've seen investors and economists sound the alarm that the market is overinvested in AI and is overdue for a massive correction, the magnitude of which could be so great as to jeopardize the economy as a whole. Pessimisits include the Bank of England, which warned about "the risk of a sharp market correction," the International Monetary Fund, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. And if those warnings don't concern you, my colleague Steve Saunders is also sounding the alarm.
Not so fast, says Markus, AT&T chief data and AI officer.
"We're leveraging the reality of AI today to do compelling things for AT&T, and whether there's a bubble or not from a stock perspective, it doesn't impact our ability to drive significant, meaningful value from the technology as it stands today," he said. "We're definitely interested, but I don't think directly impacted."
AT&T is seeing positive effect from AI across the company.
"We love our story because it's so counter to the MIT study that just came out that concluded that 95% of companies are getting zero return from their AI investment," Markus said, referring to a July study, "The State of AI in Business 2025.
"We believe we're unique, and I'll tell you why: We have a great approach that works and we have scale that matters," Markus said.
He added, "Everybody can cook a cake, but some are just better at it than others."
AT&T's recipe for AI success
Part of AT&T's recipe for success is that it has executive support and a mandate.
Another ingredient: Their risk organizations collaborate on AI development. "We have our legal, our compliance, our privacy, our security teams at the table with us, and they find a way to help us do versus a way not to do," Markus said.
Additionally, AT&T is focused on benefiting the company and its customers, delivering the greatest value for the company.
And AT&T provides a tech stack of components developed in-house and in conjunction with partners.
"We look at everything that we could be doing with AI — especially with agentic AI and generative AI -- from an ROI perspective, and we pull it all together into one place, so it's not the wild west across the firm. And we work on those things that drive the most value for our company," Markus said.
AT&T's successful AI initiatives include Ask AT&T, its generative AI platform for customer support, along with the new Ask AT&T Workflows for agentic AI. These platforms have 100,000 users across AT&T, with 750 million API calls into production systems. AT&T uses AI for software development, supporting technicians in the field and back office. "It touches everybody and almost everything," Markus said. "The scale really matters." AT&T focuses on accuracy. "We can deliver accuracy beyond the level that most companies can," Markus said.
The telco recently launched a new initiative it calls AI Fueled Coding, using AI to help develop and implement code, guided by a comprehensive internal set of standards that the AI must abide by and adhere to.
In another new initiative, AT&T is testing an AI-based "digital receptionist." for customers. "Just like a human receptionist, the digital receptionist sits between you and the outside world. It answers an incoming call on your behalf, prompting questions like: 'Who may I say is calling?' and 'What is this in regard to?' It determines whether the caller is human, how urgent the call is, and if it meets your customized criteria. If the call passes all the checks, the digital receptionist lets the call through to you and drops off the call completely. If the call is about something that the AI can handle on its own, like taking a message or accepting a delivery window, it will," Markus said in a blog post last month.
Of course, call screening is nothing new — but AT&T is looking to add intelligence to the process.
AT&T’s approach to AI stands out as pragmatic and execution-focused, rather than speculative.
A recent Cisco survey sheds favorable light on companies — like AT&T — that adopt pragmatic AI strategies. The Cisco AI Readiness Index,, now in its third year, identifies a small group of 13-14% of companies, which it calls "Pacesetters," that "outperform their peers across every measure of AI value." These companies are "3X more likely to track and measure the impact of AI investments" and "1.5x more likely to report gains in profitability, productivity and innovation."
AT&T’s steady, results-driven AI strategy offers a counterpoint to the market’s hype and anxiety. While others debate the sustainability of AI valuations, AT&T is demonstrating how to translate innovation into measurable outcomes.