Telefónica's Marc Murtra backs SLMs at Barcelona 2026 event

Telefónica executive chairman Marc Murtra said at the 2026 Cercle d’Economia meeting in Barcelona that Europe needs greater technological autonomy and that Telefónica is studying its own artificial intelligence applications based on Small Language Models (SLMs).

At the 2026 Cercle d’Economia meeting in Barcelona, Marc Murtra said Europe must build its own industrial and technological capabilities to reduce dependence on other regions in energy, semiconductors and artificial intelligence. Murtra made the remarks during a session on AI and European technological sovereignty.

Murtra said Telefónica is studying the development of its own artificial intelligence applications. He said the company is leaning toward Small Language Models, or SLMs, instead of general-purpose Large Language Models, or LLMs. He said SLMs can automate specific industrial tasks, including molecule design in pharmaceuticals and telecoms-related applications.

Murtra said 49 of the 50 most-used language models are from the United States or China, and that Mistral AI of France is the only European company among them. He also said the combined value of the five largest US technology companies is 68 to 69 times the value of the entire European telecommunications sector, and argued that telecoms is the only European sector with real capacity to generate scale. Murtra also called for simpler regulation that supports innovation and competitiveness, while saying simplification does not mean deregulation.