Deutsche Telekom and Perplexity announce new ‘AI Phone’ priced at under $1K

It was inevitable that this year at MWC in Barcelona, at least one carrier would announce a major effort at building a smartphone with a top AI company. And here it is: Deutsche Telekom (DT), said that it is building an “AI Phone,” a low-cost handset created in close collaboration with Perplexity, along with Picsart and others, plus a new AI assistant app it’s calling “Magenta AI.” DT will unveil the device in the second half of this year, and it will start selling it in 2026 for a price tag of less than $1,000. Initially, it will be aimed at the European market, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We are becoming an AI company,” Claudia Nemat, a DT board member who oversees tech and innovation at the telecom, said during a press conference Monday. It’s not building foundational large language models, she was quick to add, “but we do the AI agents.” Notably, Perplexity — the startup out of Silicon Valley that is reportedly now valued at about $9 billion — is being touted as playing a k ... Read full article.