Extreme CTO: AI isn't Just About Automation and Efficiency

As enterprises race to capitalise on artificial intelligence, Extreme Networks is demonstrating how purpose-built technology can unlock new revenue streams and transform customer experiences.

Speaking with Technology Magazine at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2026 in Barcelona, the company's CTO EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Markus Nispel revealed how Platform One could reshape the networking landscape, creating fresh commercial opportunities from stadiums to corporate environments.

The foundation of Extreme Networks' growth strategy

The foundation of Extreme Networks' growth strategy lies in its ground-up approach to AI integration. "Platform One was designed and created from scratch to support AI and agentic workflows specifically," Markus explains.

Agentic AI refers to systems that can autonomously plan, reason and take actions to achieve specific goals, rather than simply responding to prompts.

“This really starts from bottom up with a clean data architecture.” The company re-architected its entire data pipeline end to end to feed into AI effectively, then scaled AI on top of it like a software engineering exercise.

This infrastructure enables the management of "a couple of million network devices and tens of millions of endpoints,” leveraging years of cloud experience for seamless AI scaling.

Capturing the stadium market opportunity

Extreme Networks identified a significant market gap in 2013 when it began working with US stadiums, primarily for the NFL (National Football League).

The company recognised that traditional Wi-Fi and 5G networks struggled to deliver connectivity in high-density environments, where extreme user numbers cause interference and bandwidth bottlenecks. This challenge presented a commercial opportunity that Extreme has since expanded across sporting leagues in the US and Europe.

The deployment at Old Trafford, home of Manchester United, exemplifies how the company is establishing market dominance in high-density connectivity. “It's a combination of art, science and experience to serve 50,000 or 100,000 fans in a stadium – it's not easy,” Markus shares.

“The design and architecture is critically important. We're using AI to optimise the RF (radio frequency) environment and to deliver a unique experience to fans in the stadium itself.”

Extreme Networks' technology is being deployed at stadiums hosting England and Scotland's group games at the 2026 World Cup. Venues including Gillette Stadium in Boston and Miami's Hard Rock Stadium are using the solution.

The offering provides stadium-wide high-performance Wi-Fi from car parks to turnstiles for seamless digital ticketing and swift entry, as well as mobile food and drink ordering, letting fans stay seated and skip half-time queues.

Monetising data and fan engagement

Beyond solving connectivity challenges, Extreme Networks has identified how network data can drive additional revenue streams for clients. Markus emphasises that connectivity solutions can deepen customer relationships rather than distract from the core experience.

He explains: “Teams want to connect to the fans. They always say that when you're in the heart of what that team is all about and you can't communicate with your fans, that's a problem.

“Fans obviously also want to share their experience outwards, so that's a multiplier as well. This means that all these venues and teams are rethinking their digital strategy – including the stadium experience.”

According to Markus, data sits at the heart of this commercial strategy. “It's all about the data that the network is producing,” he says.

“Optimising network performance is one thing, but creating and generating insights and analytics around fan behaviour and optimising offers towards those fans is another. Data allows us to optimise the flow of the crowd within the venue, for example, and also you can create new services and offerings on top of that.”

Building trust through transparency

As Extreme Networks scales its operations across stadiums and enterprises, the company has identified cybersecurity as both a commercial differentiator and operational necessity. The high concentration of endpoints in dense environments creates potential vulnerabilities that could undermine client relationships.

“Stadiums are tricky because they are dense environments,” Markus says. “The technology we've deployed in the last few years allows us to segment the network infrastructure effectively – because you not only have fans at the stadium that you're connecting, but you also have the operational technology of the stadium itself from press to other various teams.

“Segmentation has to be able to integrate with security monitoring tools for threat response. That is our solution to that problem.”

Markus positions transparency as a key driver of customer adoption and long-term growth. “Explainability is critically important as we look at using AI for network operations,” he says.

“Trust drives adoption, and you can only gain the trust of your users using those tools with transparency. Within Platform One, we expose all of the reasoning and planning that our agents do to our users so they can really understand how certain decisions are being made.

”This allows the user to action their own approval in a human-in-the-loop type of setting. This means humans are always in control, but with the knowledge and the transparency on how an agentic system came to that result.”

For business leaders considering agentic AI deployment, Markus recommends identifying specific use cases before investment. He says: “You should think about how to use AI to create new experiences.

“It's not just about automation and efficiency, but how can you leverage the technology to do something unique. Expose your employees to it, let them play around with it.

“Once then you have identified what you want to go after, ensure that you assemble a cross-functional team and try to deliver a capability end to end.”

He encourages executives to move beyond strategy discussions. “Don't just talk about AI, experience it," he concludes. "Use it in your private life and your business life alike because we're at a huge inflexion point that is changing not only the networking industry, but society and humanity.”