MWC in Barcelona is not a holiday. It is a collective act. Every March, tens of thousands of executives travel the world to hear each other in new auditoriums and learn anew what the future is about to reveal.
This year’s 4YFN theme is Infinite AI: The Boundless Frontier. Suena ambitious. Agenda, algo menos.
The real deciding factor of Mobil appears in pasillos and private dinners — contracts, alliances, corporate wars that never happen on the official agenda — but it depends on the relationship that passes according to the script. This is what appears in leadership committees, transformation plans and even public policy. This year’s story is clear: consolidate. Copper. Escalate methodically.
Artificial intelligence goes over ten feet –health, climate, cyber security, finance, creativity, gaming and business ecosystem— as a driver, but in a digestible version: responsible adoption, optimized processes, demonstrable return on investment. There is nothing to object to.
Y no embargo, algo fata. Track Corporate Innovation promises “reengineering business models with AI” — the same promise, formulated in cases with the same words, which will have three editions on the agenda. Startups are born AI natives, just as they were born digital natives before.
This is not a trend: it is a starting point. The interesting question is not how to take the train, but where the train is going.
And this one prays to shine through its absence.
The arms turnover in Europe has not been this high since the French war – and since the Internet was born precisely from the translation of military R&D into the civilian world, would it even warrant a session on how this explosion of knowledge can arise in civilian applications? Extreme logistics, advanced materials, durable communication in conflict zones, which subsequently expand to the consumer market.
The boldest venture capitalists don’t just buy software: they buy water, farmland and lithium. The intersection between physical scarcity and digital abundance is the business question of the decade. El Mobile ignores her.
The Cuántico calculation takes ten years from these scenarios. There will be humanoids next year as well. Always next year.
The explanation for this move is uncomfortable but honest: the real customers of Mobile are CEOs, and CEOs in 2026 are long overdue. A pandemic, a war, different types of interests and a cycle of hype that promised more than it delivered.
What they want is not another leap into the void. I want more readable content and solid arguments for advice. The promise of control is now more seductive than the promise of reconfiguring reality, and the industry is – wisely, commercially – taking it.
This is legit. It is also a sign of the times: the future has become a dream that has turned into risk management. Ambicion is administered in homeopathic doses.
What I’m asking without an answer—and what opinion leaders in these places are asking—is how long an ecosystem that has changed the vision of implementation can sustain itself. Execution without vision is efficiency. And efficiency alone does not change eras.
The list of topics for 2026 is there, and it’s useful to note down for MWC: all of society, without exception of size or sector, keeps you turned on AI and you have to use it and think about it. But if you ask yourself another question — that the world is moving instead of optimizing it — you will tend to look for it outside the official agenda. Or in the pasillos, where it always clears up.
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