Though it's still several years away from widespread deployment, 5G is a key component in the evolution of cloud-computing ecosystems toward more distributed environments. Between now and 2025, the networking industry will invest about $1 trillion worldwide on 5G, supporting rapid global adoption of mobile, edge, and embedded devices in practically every sphere of our lives. It will be a proving ground for next-generation artificial intelligence (AI), offering an environment within which data-driven algorithms will guide every cloud-centric process, device, and experience. Just as significant, AI will be a key component in ensuring that 5G networks are optimized from end to end, 24 7. AI will live at every edge in the hybrid clouds, multiclouds, and mesh networks of the future. Already, we see prominent AI platform vendors--such as NVIDIA--making significant investments in 5G-based services for mobility, Internet of Things (IoT) and other edge environments.