How the World Cup is a high-stakes stage for Big Tech’s AI push

The pact, announced in October 2024, kicks into high gear for the 2026 World Cup, which has been called the most complex tournament in history with games to be played in 16 cities spanning three countries and an expanded field of 48 teams. FIFA estimates more than five million fans will watch the matches in person, with billions more following gameplay from their homes, offices, local bars, and any other location with a reliable internet connection.

“Most of the world is watching, and it creates an unbelievable expectation that you really have to make sure this works,” says Art Hu, Lenovo’s chief information officer.

It turns out the World Cup isn’t just about sports. It’s also a splashy event where some of the world’s largest tech giants have a fresh opportunity to display their AI prowess. The technology is fueling more complex search queries and agentic ticket booking for Google, while Salesforce’s Slack will coordinate workforce management across all host cities, and Verizon is providing network connectivity at stadiums across North America.

One of Lenovo’s splashier AI offerings is Football AI Pro, a generative AI knowledge-based tool that analyzes hundreds of millions of football data points, both from past matches and through real-time analysis, which can then be tapped by coaches, trainers, and other support staff via text, video, graphs, and 3D visualizations. The tool can be used to assess, for example, the success rate of a corner kick by Argentina’s Lionel Messi or Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.

“More data will be coming in as matches get played,” says Hu, who adds that Lenovo and FIFA wanted to level the playing field so that this technology was available to all countries. But what’s left to the teams is how much they want to use the data. Some may opt to strictly follow the numbers whipped up by their AI-enabled gadgets, while others may use the data at a high level but leave tactical calls to the coaches.

Heading into the World Cup, Google has struck team partnerships with eight squads, including the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, and France. Marvin Chow, Google’s vice president of consumer and AI marketing, says the World Cup presents a unique, global opportunity to showcase the tech giant’s user-focused AI capabilities, but from a design perspective, the application of the technology is intentionally subtle.

World Cup players, Chow said, “are using AI and digital tools to prepare for matches, get ready for new cities, where to eat in the city, and what are the things to do. They’re people too.” 

Google’s AI-powered search advances can show interactive graphics that convey the difference between a 4-4-2 and a 4-3-3 formation, an advancement from pre-AI queries that were traditionally heavy on news articles and summaries. Google’s Maps and Waze are filled with data about traffic and road closures, stadium imagery, and live scoring updates whenever a car is stopped.

AI agents that can be authorized to hunt for tickets online are still in the early pilot stages, according to Chow, who says these capabilities will be more ready for prime time by the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil in 2027. “It’s really in the early days, I would say, for this World Cup,” says Chow.

RapidSOS, meanwhile, connects data from more than 723 million devices, apps, and sensors to 911 and other first responders and will work directly with FIFA and local stadiums in major cities such as Atlanta and Kansas City to support AI translation and make data-sharing easier.

Zach LaValley, the chief technology officer of RapidSOS, says the influx of fans from foreign nations will put pressure on public safety, both for non-English speakers and for those who know the language but may not speak it regularly. “When things get real and the shit hits the fan, people go to their native tongue to express themselves,” says LaValley.

AI-driven transcription will plug into local 911 calls within a stadium, alleviating the work a first responder would need to do to first figure out what foreign language is being spoken, then spend up to three minutes finding a translator. RapidSOS also works with FIFA and the stadiums to share details about the stadium layout and access ramps with federal, state, and local agencies, while also contacting a point person at the stadium when an emergency situation occurs.

“The whole thing is how do we make sure you are safe when you come to the World Cup and basically try to break down corporate and virtual data silos,” says LaValley.

Sportradar, which provides technology and data services to sports betting companies, works directly with major leagues including FIFA, NHL, NBA, and utilizes machine learning and AI capabilities to detect strange patterns that may imply illegal match fixing attempts. After an initial anomaly is flagged, it will go through a second phase of AI-enabled identification before a human is alerted to look into the case further.

“This is the biggest betting event in the world; we expect up to $50 billion overall turnover, which is the total amount of bets being placed,” says Behshad Behzadi, chief product, technology, and AI officer at Sportradar. “We play a big role in providing integrity services for different sports, including FIFA.”

John Kell

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NEWS PACKETS

Trump homes in on AI. With the imminent public offerings of AI startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic, and the large projected impact on the future of labor and even human life itself, President Donald Trump has, over the past week, taken a far more serious look at AI. He’s proposed a potential government profit-sharing plan—a concept that Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders has endorsed—though Politico later reported that invites for tech companies to meet with leadership in Washington haven’t been sent out yet. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Sriram Krishnan, a top White House advisor on AI, is leaving the role but will continue to serve as an outside advisor.

Anthropic wants an AI ‘pause.’ And then releases Mythos publicly. The Claude creator, whose recently developed Mythos AI model sparked concerns for its cybersecurity risks, last week published a blog post that argued technologists should consider effectively slowing down the development of AI to “give ourselves more time to deal with its immense implications.” Anthropic proposed a global agreement to pause frontier AI development to “enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.” Days later, Anthropic officially released its Mythos-class model to the public, saying its capabilities exceeded the performance of past models that have been made generally available and demonstrating exceptional performance in areas such as coding and knowledge work.

OpenAI confidentially files for IPO. The ChatGPT maker has a targeted valuation of up to $1 trillion and could go public as soon as September, Reuters reports citing sources, as OpenAI and top rival Anthropic race to debut their stock market listings first. OpenAI’s confidential filing did not yet determine the size or terms of the offering, though at that valuation, it would be among the most valuable companies on U.S. stock exchanges. Reuters reports it would rank 12th, not factoring in where Anthropic or SpaceX could land. But as Fortune reports, some on Wall Street are questioning whether it’s worth investing in startups that have massive potential, but also are perhaps overvalued and deeply unprofitable. “Is this, we are asked, one of those events one will look back on and ask why it wasn’t an obvious sell signal at the time?” Inigo Fraser Jenkins of AllianceBernstein wrote in a note to clients seen by Fortune.

Apple debuts the rebranded Siri AI. After years of criticism that it has been far slower to develop an AI strategy than Big Tech rivals such as Google and Amazon, Apple on Monday unveiled a rebuilt Siri, an AI assistant that Fortune reports can understand personal context and what apps across a device can do. Apple also debuted a new AI-enhanced photography feature called Spatial Reframing, which uses 3D modeling to let users adjust the angle or composition of a photo that’s already been taken. Bloomberg reports that Apple has delayed Siri AI’s rollout in Europe, blaming a rift with regulators. The company also vowed that its AI model usage wouldn’t compromise users’ security.

SpaceX disclosed a massive Google deal. Yet another IPO looms from Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company, which on Friday shared in a regulatory filing that Google would pay it $920 million a month for compute power, a deal that would also give the search giant access to Nvidia’s AI chips. As the New York Times reports, the multi-year agreement could fetch SpaceX about $30 billion through 2029. Fortune has taken a closer look at the pitch SpaceX is making to investors, reporting that the company needs to grow both revenue and profits at a pace never seen before by an American company if it wants to justify an expected $1.75 trillion valuation.

ADOPTION CURVE

The C-suite remains vexed by IT’s slow progress on AI. With questions beginning to more aggressively swirl around the cost enterprises are paying for adopting AI across workflows, a new survey backed by cloud storage provider Nasuni found that 59% of IT leaders say that AI is still their top IT investment, up 12% from a 2025 study in which it also ranked first. Four in ten companies reported that they plan to “significantly” boost spending on AI tools and generative AI platforms, according to the survey of 1,000 purchasing decision makers across the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. 

Nick Burling, Nasuni’s chief product officer, says that the findings reflect a top-down mandate that’s emerged within the C-suite and is increasingly taking control of IT-driven AI projects, but that executives aren’t happy with the solutions that are being offered by vendors, nor with the roadmap for a return on investment.

The C-suite is “talking about how do I help show the CFO that we’re getting the returns on these investments, and also, how do I manage this growing cost of token consumption,” Burling rhetorically asks. The biggest barriers in Nasuni’s survey align with findings from other research on this topic: 46% of organizations say their AI projects are revealing issues with data quality and governance.

Courtesy of Nasuni

JOBS RADAR

Hiring:

– Canva is seeking a head of business technology platforms, based in San Francisco. Posted salary range: $306K-$443K/year.

– The Leading Hotels of the World is seeking a VP of enterprise data, based in New York. Posted salary range: $250K-$300K/year.

– University Credit Union is seeking a CTO, based in Los Angeles. Posted salary range: $231K-$308.1K/year.

– Transdev North America is seeking a CIO, based in Lombard, Illinois. Posted salary range: $290K-$325K/year.

Hired:

– Choice Hotels promoted Tony Pallas to CTO, where he will lead enterprise technology, engineering and the company’s cloud-based hotel management system, SkyTouch Technology. Pallas will report to Anna Scozzafava, chief data, AI, and technology officer. Pallas has worked at Choice Hotels for 11 years, most recently serving as the chief architect for “Charlie,” an AI agent that debuted in May to field questions from hotel staff.

– Myriad Genetics appointed Raj Jampa as CTO, where he will oversee the technology organization’s strategy and be responsible for further leveraging AI to increase efficiency at the genetic screening and testing company. Prior to joining Myriad, Jampa served in senior technology leadership roles at Agilent Technologies, Exact Sciences, and Genomic Health.

– Kroll appointed Karen Higgins-Carter as chief information and technology officer. She joined the financial and risk advisory firm after most recently serving as chief information and digital officer at construction firm Gilbane Building. Higgins-Carter previously served as CIO at Webster Financial and held senior roles at MUFG Union Bank, Bridgewater Associates and JPMorgan Chase.

– MSCI announced the appointment of Kashi Kakarla as CTO and head of product engineering, effective June 22. Kakarla joins the financial firm from Intuit, where he worked for 17 years and most recently led technology and engineering for the software maker’s small business platform.

– Velocity Financial named Dean Thevaos as CTO, where he will lead the technology and engineering teams for the real estate financial company. Most recently, Thevaos served as CTO and head of product at retail mortgage lender CrossCountry Mortgage. He also previously served as VP and head of engineering at LendingTree and held software engineering roles at Wells Fargo.

– Divergent Technologies promoted Brian Erhartic to the role of CTO, two-and-a-half years after he initially joined the defense manufacturing startup as VP of additive manufacturing development. Previously, Erhartic served as a VP at aerospace manufacturer Relativity Space and as a senior director at SpaceX.

Fortune AIQ: From Pilot to Profit

The following case studies cover the transition from AI experimentation to measurable business impact. Explore all of Fortune AIQ, and read the latest collection of stories below:

—Why dbt Labs CEO views AI efficiency and creativity as the same thing

—Omnisend offers quarterly raises for employees who use AI to drive business impact

—AI is supercharging cyberattacks—and most companies aren’t ready

—How Lumen’s ‘maniacal focus’ on KPIs drove measurable AI impact

—AI agents are flattening corporate hierarchies. Here’s how to develop a new playbook