ModelBest and China Telecom AI Technology partner on on-device models

On October 12, 2026, ModelBest, a Chinese foundation model company focused on edge-side models, and China Telecom AI Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation agreement at a ceremony in Beijing. Yang Ge, deputy general manager of China Telecom AI Technology, and Lei Shengtao, president of ModelBest, represented the two companies.

Under the agreement, the two sides will jointly develop products around terminal intelligence and industry intelligence. In consumer electronics, they plan to build personalized on-device AI applications; for enterprise customers, they will focus on standardized vertical industry models and agent infrastructure products and solutions. They will also work together to improve edge-side model capabilities and conduct joint R&D on inference acceleration technologies.

ModelBest is known for its MiniCPM series of edge-side foundation models, which have been deployed in automotive, smart home, AI phones, and AI PCs. China Telecom AI Technology is the core AI arm of China Telecom, with strengths in cloud-side model development and application. The collaboration will leverage China Telecom's cloud-network infrastructure and nationwide channels to integrate edge models with operator platforms.

Yang Ge said the two companies have highly complementary capabilities and will integrate advanced edge model capabilities into the Tianyi AI cloud-device product system to accelerate adoption across industries. Lei Shengtao said the partnership would help build a closed loop of cloud training, edge deployment, and cloud-edge collaboration, creating replicable benchmarks for terminals such as phones, PCs, and smart home devices.