Yago Tenorio

Santiago ‘Yago’ Tenorio became the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Strategy and Technology Enablement at Verizon in October 2024, leading the company’s transition toward Level 4 network autonomy. 

His mandate focuses on transforming Verizon’s network from rule-based automation to AI-driven systems that can analyze conditions, make decisions, and execute actions with minimal human intervention.

Before joining Verizon, Tenorio spent 25 years at Vodafone, where he led network architecture and technology strategy, including work on Open RAN, cloud networking, and network APIs. He also served as CTO of Vodafone Ireland and Chief Network Officer of Vodafone UK.

Under Tenorio’s leadership, Verizon is expanding AI across both its network and engineering organization. The company’s automation platforms completed more than 70 million network configuration changes in 2025, while its deployment of Anthropic’s Claude Code to approximately 33,000 technology employees is helping engineers build and manage AI-enabled networks. 

The strategy positions AI as a core operating layer for telecommunications infrastructure rather than a standalone productivity tool.

“At Verizon, we are redefining our future by building our networks purposefully and intentionally to serve as the preferred connectivity foundation for the world's most responsive AI solutions,” Tenorio said. “We’re moving away from traditional hardware constraints to turn our network into a software-defined, self-organizing reasoning engine that optimizes itself in real time. We aren’t just adopting tools; we are intentionally engineering an AI-native enterprise where AI becomes the operational control system of the network itself.”