In a decisive move that highlights the growing imperative for artificial intelligence integration within the telecommunications sector, network software provider Mavenir has initiated a fundamental corporate restructuring, marked by a significant overhaul of its executive leadership and a strategic realignment of its business units. This comprehensive recalibration signals a deliberate pivot from the company’s long-standing primary focus on open RAN to a new identity as an AI-centric organization, aiming to embed intelligent, automated processes into the core of its entire product portfolio. The shift is not merely a change in branding but a deep operational transformation designed to address the evolving demands of network operators and enterprises seeking more efficient, autonomous, and predictive network solutions. This strategic reorientation is intended to position Mavenir at the forefront of the next wave of network innovation, where AI is no longer an ancillary feature but the foundational engine driving performance, security, and customer experience in an increasingly complex digital ecosystem.
A Changing of the Guard
Departures and Transitional Roles
The initial phase of Mavenir’s strategic transformation involves a significant reshuffle at the highest levels of its leadership, with several key executives scheduled to depart from their current roles by the end of January 2026. Among those leaving are Terry Hungle, the company’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Bahram Jalalizadeh, who served as Executive Vice President and Head of Sales and Marketing; Ashok Khuntia, the President of Core Networks; and Anup Mahajan, who held the position of Senior Vice President of Engineering. To ensure continuity and a seamless transition during this period of substantial change, the company has established advisory roles for some of the outgoing leaders. Terry Hungle will transition into a special advisor position for the board, leveraging his deep financial expertise to guide the company through its next fiscal chapter. Similarly, Bahram Jalalizadeh will continue as a consultant, providing crucial support for ongoing customer programs and relationships, thereby mitigating disruption and maintaining momentum on key accounts as the new leadership team settles in.
The departure of these long-serving executives represents a clear break from the past, paving the way for a new cohort of leaders specifically chosen to spearhead the company’s aggressive AI-first agenda. This carefully managed transition underscores the seriousness of Mavenir’s commitment to its new direction. Rather than a sudden or disruptive exodus, the phased departures and ongoing advisory roles suggest a methodical approach aimed at preserving institutional knowledge while simultaneously injecting fresh perspectives into the organization’s strategic core. The move is designed to reassure stakeholders, including customers and investors, that the company’s operational stability remains a top priority even as it embarks on a bold and transformative journey. The calculated nature of this leadership change indicates that the pivot towards AI is a well-considered, long-term strategy rather than a reactive measure, setting a deliberate course for the company’s future growth and market positioning in the years ahead.
A New Cadre of Leaders
In concert with the announced departures, Mavenir has appointed a new slate of executives, primarily drawn from internal talent, to helm its revitalized AI-driven strategy. Uli Dopfer, formerly the CFO of ADTRAN Holdings, is a key external hire who will assume the role of Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, taking charge of corporate finance, strategic planning, and human resources. His experience is expected to be instrumental in steering the company through its financial evolution. The other appointments reflect a strategy of promoting from within, elevating leaders already familiar with Mavenir’s culture and technology. Dejan Leskaroski has been named Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer, tasked with driving global sales in the new strategic context. Furthermore, the company’s new structure is reflected in several general manager appointments: Michael Cooper will become EVP and General Manager for the newly formed packet core, security, and messaging segment, while Santhosh Kumar is now EVP and GM for platform and cloud, overseeing the foundational technologies that will support the AI initiatives across both business units.
These leadership changes are directly aligned with the company’s technological ambitions. Sachin Karkala has been appointed EVP and GM for IMS & RAN, carrying a specific mandate to accelerate the evolution toward AI-native solutions within these critical domains. This highlights the company’s intent to embed artificial intelligence not as an overlay but as an intrinsic component of its radio and core network products. Rounding out the new leadership team is Sandeep Singh, who takes on the role of Senior Vice President and GM for business solutions, where he will be responsible for portfolio-wide product marketing, ensuring a cohesive and compelling message that communicates the value of Mavenir’s AI-centric offerings to the market. This new executive team is purpose-built to execute a singular vision: transforming Mavenir into a company where AI is the central nervous system of its entire operation, from product development to customer engagement and strategic growth.
Strategic Realignment and Industry Perspective
Restructuring for an AI-Native Future
Beyond the executive-level changes, Mavenir is undertaking a significant operational reorganization to align its structure with its new AI-centric mission. The company is consolidating its diverse product lines into two integrated business segments: the first encompassing packet core, messaging, and security, and the second focused on voice and radio access technologies (RAN). Critically, both of these newly formed divisions will share a unified focus on artificial intelligence and will be underpinned by a common set of platform and cloud technologies. This structural shift is designed to break down internal silos and foster a more holistic approach to innovation, ensuring that AI capabilities are developed and deployed consistently across the entire product portfolio. The objective is to move beyond simply adding AI features to existing products and instead build systems from the ground up with an AI-integrated architecture. This foundation is intended to enable the development of truly “agentic,” intent-driven operations where networks can autonomously predict, adapt, and optimize their performance with minimal human intervention.
This realignment represents a profound strategic bet on the future of telecommunications, where network intelligence becomes the primary differentiator. By creating dedicated business units with a shared AI mandate, Mavenir aims to accelerate its research and development cycles and bring more sophisticated, automated solutions to market faster. The supporting platform and cloud group, led by Santhosh Kumar, will play a pivotal role in this new structure, providing the scalable and flexible infrastructure necessary to develop, train, and deploy advanced AI models across all of Mavenir’s offerings. This move is more than just an organizational chart update; it is a fundamental re-architecting of the company’s innovation engine. The goal is to create a symbiotic relationship between the product-focused business units and the underlying technology platform, fostering a culture where intelligence is embedded everywhere, from the network edge to the core, and driving a new standard for operational efficiency and service agility in the telecom industry.
An Analyst’s Viewpoint
Industry analysts view Mavenir’s strategic shift and leadership overhaul not as a radical departure but as a logical and perhaps overdue evolution for the company. Monica Paolini, a principal analyst at Senza Fili, characterized the move as a “recalibration of focus” that aligns well with the company’s long-term core competencies in software and network virtualization. According to Paolini, this leadership change was an expected development, reflecting the company’s need to adapt to a changing market landscape where software and intelligence are increasingly more valuable than hardware. She specifically noted that Mavenir’s decision to reduce its emphasis on the radio access network (RAN) hardware business was a prudent one, allowing the company to strategically exit a highly competitive and capital-intensive market that was never its primary strength. This move enables Mavenir to double down on its software-centric DNA, where it has historically demonstrated a stronger competitive advantage and a clearer path to profitability and innovation.
This perspective suggests that the pivot to an AI-first strategy is a natural progression, building on the groundwork the company has been laying since its major refinancing in June. Mavenir’s publicly stated vision has been to create systems capable of agentic, intent-driven operations, and this restructuring provides the organizational framework to realize that ambition. By appointing leaders with specific mandates to accelerate AI-native evolution and by realigning its business units around this central theme, the company is translating a high-level vision into a concrete operational plan. The industry consensus appears to be that by shedding less strategic assets and concentrating its resources and talent on the high-growth area of AI-driven network automation, Mavenir is not just course-correcting but is positioning itself to be a more formidable and focused player in the future of open, intelligent, and software-defined networks.
A Path Redefined
The sweeping changes implemented at Mavenir marked a definitive turning point, repositioning the company from a proponent of open RAN to a dedicated pioneer of AI-native telecommunications. This strategic recalibration, which involved a carefully orchestrated overhaul of its executive team and a fundamental restructuring of its business units, was a clear acknowledgment that the future of network innovation lay in intelligence and automation. The move was not merely a reaction to market trends but a proactive effort to define the next chapter of the company’s identity. By entrusting a new cadre of leaders with the mandate to embed AI into the very fabric of its portfolio, Mavenir took a decisive step to align its operational structure with its technological vision. The transition signaled a firm commitment to building autonomous, predictive, and efficient network solutions, a direction that was widely seen as both necessary and astute within the industry. This overhaul ultimately forged a new path for Mavenir, one defined by software-driven intelligence and designed to meet the complex demands of a rapidly evolving digital world.
