Telstra and Woolworths’ Quantium to form new data and AI joint venture

Telstra and Quantium have announced plans to start a new joint venture to help the incumbent telco achieve its T25 data and AI goals.

Under the deal, Quantium will bring its data science and AI capabilities together with Telstra’s customer, product, and network data assets to focus on Telstra’s enterprise customers in sectors such as mining, agribusiness, and supply chain.

According to Telstra, bringing the two companies together will create a new “whole of tech stack” proposition for its industrial customers, which will be delivered in partnership with Telstra Purple.

At the same time, the partnership will leverage Telstra’s Data Hub to enable enterprise and government customers to share and aggregate their data, while using Quantium’s big data capabilities, Telstra added.

“This new JV will not only provide personalised and data-enabled products and offers for Telstra’s customers, it will also embed proactive and predictive AI and machine learning across Telstra’s core business,” Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said.

“Focusing on our customers and improving the way we serve them is crucial to the success of our T25 strategy, and this partnership will supercharge that ambition by reshaping how we add value for our enterprise customers and enable improvements in the personalisation of offers and value for members of Telstra’s rewards program, Telstra Plus.”

At the same time, Penn said Telstra would look at how it can leverage Quantium’s analytics and ML to embed it across its core business, such as to identify fraudulent activity, or make enhanced credit decisions.

While a detailed scope of the partnership will be finalised in the coming months, the pair have already started servicing enterprise customers.

Quantium is a majority-owned company of Woolworths, after the supermarket giant paid AU$223 million earlier this year to bump up its stake in the analytics firm.

Under the deal, Woolworths increased its stake from 47% to 75%, while Quantium founders and team members retain 25%.

Woolworths initially purchased a 50% share of Quantium in 2013 for approximately AU$20 million.

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