Usman Javaid to Head Up AI at Orange, CAIO Joins Anthropic

French telecoms group Orange has named Usman Javaid as its new Chief AI Officer (CAIO) with effect from 1 September 2026.

Usman has served as Global Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Orange Business since 2023 and will replace Steve Jarrett, the outgoing CAIO, who is joining AI firm Anthropic.

The appointment comes amid reports of an intensifying battle for AI talent across the technology sector, with major players including Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta said to be offering substantial compensation packages to attract leading figures.

Telecoms veteran takes Orange's AI helm

Usman brings more than 20 years of international technology experience to the role, much of it in telecommunications.

He has served as Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Orange Business since April 2023, leading strategy, development and marketing of products and services as well as data and AI transformation, Orange said in a statement.

Between 2019 and 2023, Usman held multiple leadership positions at AWS, including responsibility for cloud services across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Prior to AWS, he spent 11 years at telecoms operator Vodafone from 2008 to 2019 in various international roles. He initially worked in B2C where he spearheaded 4G European rollout, before moving to B2B to cover cloud, IoT, operations and network strategy.

Departing AI chief joins Anthropic

Confirming his exit from Orange via LinkedIn, Steve said: "I start at Anthropic on August 25th and will be based in Paris, initially helping the company to better understand and adapt our products to the needs of the European and African market.

"Anthropic impresses me with [its] ethics-driven mission to build reliable, interpretable and steerable AI systems, and I continue to meet wonderfully brilliant and modest people at the company."

Steve joined the telecommunications company in 2019, initially as Group Senior Vice President for Data and AI at Orange Innovation before becoming CAIO in December 2023.

In his LinkedIn post, Steve outlined his accomplishments at Orange, including making the telecoms firm the first French company to establish a direct OpenAI relationship and developing the first fine-tuned speech AI models capable of accurately recognising regional African languages such as Wolof, Swahili, Bombara and Lingala.

AI deployment across Orange's network

Orange positions itself as "a leading player in AI" on its website. It says it has avoided 180,000 maintenance callouts in France through the use of AI and data-based online diagnostic tools to test its customers' Fiber to the Home boxes.

The telecoms company says it prioritises "frugal AI", optimising deployments for "efficiency and sustainability".

Bruno Zerbib, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology & Innovation Officer, Orange, says: "At Orange, we believe every innovation should be inclusive and beneficial for all.

"That's why our vision for AI is ethical, low-impact, human-centred and inclusive, without compromising our commitment to reducing CO₂ emissions."

In Steve's departure post, he says that Orange “has deeply held ethical beliefs matched with world-class engineering” and that its mission to connect over 340 million people across 26 countries worldwide was close to his heart.