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Thai conglomerate, CP Group, which operates globally, has developed an AI-first strategy that spans multiple industrial sectors, including telecommunications. It aims to turn data and intelligence into growth for all of its businesses, customers and employees.
How telecom fits into CP Group’s multi-sector AI-first strategy
Ruza Sabanovic is an Executive Director with the global conglomerate, CP Group, which holds shares in Thai operator True. She shares with TM Forum how she is drawing on her experience of leading transformation at Telenor to help turn the CP Group’s trans-sector AI vision into an operational reality.
TM Forum: What is your role in helping CP Group and True to transform?
RS: My role is to turn CP Group ’s AI vision into an operational reality — connecting leadership ambition with real, measurable change. I see transformation not as a project, but as a journey of people, culture, and intelligence.
We are focused on making AI a driver of value at CP Group and True: practical, scalable, and aligned with clear business outcomes
Transformation isn’t about replacing humans with AI; it’s about empowering people to achieve more with intelligence that acts alongside them.
TM Forum: What are the current transformation priorities and why?
RS: Thailand stands at a crossroads — individuals are adapting to AI faster than companies. CP Group and True’s role is to close that gap. We’re moving from experimentation to systemic transformation with one guiding idea: turn data and intelligence into growth for every business, customer, and employee.
Our priorities are built around the idea of turning data and intelligence into growth for every business, every customer, and every employee. They are:
AI is not the next wave of technology — it’s the new fabric of how we live, work, and grow.
TM Forum: How do you expect to apply and share learnings from your previous roles in driving transformation?
RS: Transformation succeeds when ideas scale and people trust the systems guiding them. We are shifting from pilots to platforms — from trying AI to trusting AI. Our approach balances boldness with safety and urgency with practicality-with a “technology now” mindset; we act today and improve tomorrow.
We leverage CP Group’s collaborative ecosystem to:
TM Forum: What will it mean in practice for CP Group and True to be an AI-first company, and how big a change will this represent?
RS: Becoming AI-first means reimagining CP Group and True as a living, learning system — adaptive, predictive, and human-centered. It is actually earning the license to operate in the future.
An AI-first True is not just connecting Thailand — it’s creating the next generation of intelligent businesses. Following an approach to act fast, adapt continuously, and collaborating, we aim for CP Group and True to be models for how Asian enterprises scale AI responsibly and at speed.
Practical implementations are:
TM Forum: What AI foundations does CP Group have in place, and what are the company’s priorities as it shifts to becoming AI-first
RS: At CP Group and True, our AI strategy blends vision with execution, ensuring AI transforms how we operate and how we contribute to Thailand’s digital economy. Our foundation is human-centered, built on data, cloud, and empowered people, aiming to make Thailand not just an AI adopter, but an AI innovator and creator.
To accelerate this transformation, we have introduced the Chief AI Officer (CAIO) role in each operation, reporting directly to the CEO, ensuring alignment, accountability, and strategic execution across the Group.
We’ve launched a Group-wide AI First Program built on a common architecture, shared strategy, and six key pillars — ensuring all our business units move in one direction.
These six pillars are:
Our AI foundation and Group-wide AI First Program are tightly integrated. For example, Unified AI & Data Platform and cloud-native AI infrastructure through True IDC serve as our AI Infra and Factory, enabling enterprise-wide insights, model development, deployment, and monitoring. An AI Center of Excellence (CoE) connects data scientists, engineers, and business leaders to industrialize innovation, share best practices, and scale solutions. Upskilling at scale empowers employees with AI literacy, with a target of 50% literacy by 2027 and 100% by 2030.
We are deploying AI solutions across retail, telecom, food, and logistics, focusing on real business use cases through entities like Amaze and other CP Group companies. Strategic partnerships with “skin-in-the-game” collaborators help us co-create solutions, scale faster, and generate new value for Thailand and Southeast Asia.
In summary, by combining our data advantage, cloud infrastructure, AI talent, and partnerships under one unified AI First strategy, CP Group and True are evolving into a truly AI-first enterprise that delivers value, efficiency, and responsible innovation across all our businesses.
We are obsessed with speed and scale: partners accelerate capability building and enable faster time-to-value. We look for complementary capabilities — bringing data, domain expertise, technology stacks, and go-to-market channels that CP Group alone may not have. Risk sharing spreads investment and operational risk while aligning incentives. Through ecosystem effects, co-created solutions can become industry standards and open new markets across CP Group’s sectors.
CP Group transformation is a national story — of people, partnerships, and purpose. Together with CP Group and visionary leaders, we aim to make Thailand not just an AI adopter, but an AI innovator and creator. The agentic future starts here — powered by people, guided by purpose, and accelerated by AI.
