Deutsche Telekom Muscles Into AI and Streaming, but Share Price Still Has Ground to Make Up

Deutsche Telekom unveils Soofi S AI model, MagentaTV hits 200M World Cup viewers, and accelerates €2B buyback as stock rebounds from 52-week low.

The Bonn-based telecoms group is making headlines on two fronts this week — a homegrown open-source language model with real computing muscle and record viewership for its World Cup coverage. Yet for all the operational cheer, the stock remains well below the highs it touched earlier in the year, leaving investors to weigh sustained execution against a still-recovering valuation.

Open-Source AI Model Trains on T-Systems Cloud

T-Systems, Deutsche Telekom’s enterprise IT arm, has provided the infrastructure for “Soofi S,” a German-language AI model boasting 31.6 billion parameters. The model was trained entirely on the division’s Industrial AI Cloud in Munich, consuming roughly 253,000 GPU-hours on Nvidia B200 systems. The project, coordinated by the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband), is positioned as a privacy-conscious alternative to offerings from US hyperscalers.

The move underscores Deutsche Telekom’s strategy to build out a higher-margin B2B business by bundling cloud capacity with AI services for European companies and research institutions. It is not a pilot or a roadmap item: the product is live, and the company is already marketing it as a tool that can run on EU soil without crossing data-protection boundaries.

MagentaTV Breaks World Cup Viewership Records

Meanwhile, the group’s streaming arm MagentaTV reported that it had reached more than 200 million viewers during the football World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada. That figure nearly triples the 70 million fans the service attracted during the men’s European Championship in 2024. Germany chief Rodrigo Diehl said MagentaTV brought the tournament “closer than ever to the people,” while TV chief Arnim Butzen highlighted strong audience feedback alongside the numbers.

The streaming milestone reinforces the strategic value of sports rights for Deutsche Telekom’s media division. With the women’s World Cup in 2027 and the men’s European Championship in 2028 already in the pipeline, the company is banking on live events to sustain subscriber growth and differentiate its offering.

Buyback Programme Gathers Pace

Behind the scenes, the capital allocation machine is running in parallel. Between July 6 and July 10, 2026, the company repurchased just over 2.3 million of its own shares on Xetra. That weekly activity sits within a broader buyback programme approved in November 2025 that authorises up to €2 billion in repurchases through the end of 2026. After the first two tranches, the group had already spent roughly €1.01 billion. The current third tranche, running until September 30, 2026, allows for the buyback of up to 23.5 million shares — a maximum of €560 million.

The timing of the accelerated purchases is notable. In late June the stock hit a 52-week low of €23.54. Since then it has staged a noticeable rebound. On Thursday the share traded at €26.56, later edging to €26.61, putting the weekly gain at just over 5%. The recovery from the low now stands at 12.83%, but the stock still sits 22.68% below its 52?week high of €34.35, recorded on February 27.

Market Signals: Mixed but Improving

Technically, the share price remains below its 50?day moving average of €27.30, and the relative strength index of 51.6 suggests a neutral stance with no extreme signals. Year?to?date the stock is down 4.70%, and on a twelve?month view it has fallen 12.78%. Nonetheless, the combination of a rising share price and an active buyback signals management’s view that the current level represents an attractive entry point for deploying capital reserves.

Investors will have to wait for a fuller picture on profitability until August 6, when the company publishes its second?quarter interim report. That update should clarify how the operational improvements at T?Systems and the ongoing efficiency programme are flowing through to the bottom line. For now, the twin narratives of artificial intelligence and streaming reach are giving the market positive, tangible stories — even if the share price has yet to fully reflect them.