NVIDIA has announced a $1 billion investment in Nokia to jointly develop an AI-driven 6G platform, marking a pivotal moment for the future of global telecom networks. The NVIDIA-Nokia partnership marks the beginning of an artificial intelligence-based wireless era, laying the foundation for enhanced consumer experiences and enterprise services.
Under this strategic partnership, NVIDIA will provide commercial-grade AI-RAN products to Nokia’s industry-leading portfolio. This will help enable communication service providers to launch AI-native 5G-Advanced and 6G networks on NVIDIA platforms.
NVIDIA will also invest $1 billion in Nokia at a subscription price of $6.01 per share. This funding is subject to customary closing conditions.
“The next leap in telecom isn’t just from 5G to 6G, it’s a fundamental redesign of the network to deliver AI-powered connectivity, capable of processing intelligence from the data center all the way to the edge. Our partnership with NVIDIA, and their investment in Nokia, will accelerate AI-RAN innovation to put an AI data center into everyone’s pocket,” said Justin Hotard, President and CEO of Nokia.
The partnership will address the fast-growing AI-RAN (Radio Access Network) market, which is expected to exceed a cumulative $200 billion by 2030, according to reports.
T-Mobile US will collaborate with Nokia and NVIDIA to drive and test AI-RAN technologies as a part of the 6G innovation and development process. Trials are expected to begin in 2026, focused on field validation of performance and efficiency gains for customers.
“Telecommunications is a critical national infrastructure, the digital nervous system of our economy and security,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Built on NVIDIA CUDA and AI, AI-RAN will revolutionize telecommunications, a generational platform shift that empowers the United States to regain global leadership in this vital infrastructure technology. Together with Nokia and America’s telecom ecosystem, we’re igniting this revolution, equipping operators to build intelligent, adaptive networks that will define the next generation of global connectivity.”
NVIDIA is launching the Aerial RAN Computer Pro (ARC-Pro), a 6G-compatible accelerated computing platform that combines connectivity, computing, and sensing capabilities. This technology enables telecom service providers to move from 5G-Advanced to 6G through software upgrades.
The NVIDIA ARC-Pro reference design is available for manufacturers and network equipment providers to design proprietary AI-RAN products, supporting both new buildouts and expansions to existing base stations.
This partnership will enable Nokia’s mobile network customers to transition seamlessly from today’s RAN networks to future AI-RAN networks.
Dell Technologies is driving innovation in Nokia’s AI-RAN solution with its advanced Dell PowerEdge servers. Engineered for seamless scalability, these servers enable no-touch software upgrades and low-touch silicon upgrades. This ensures a smooth evolution from 5G to 5G-Advanced and 6G.
“The telecommunications industry owns the most valuable real estate for AI, the edge, where data is created,” said Michael Dell, chairman and chief executive officer of Dell Technologies.
“This AI-RAN collaboration with Nokia and NVIDIA makes that potential real. We’ve built some of the world’s largest AI clusters with 100,000+ GPUs. Now we’re applying that expertise to distribute intelligence across millions of edge nodes,” Dell added.
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With these advanced AI-RAN systems, mobile operators can improve performance and efficiency. It will also enhance network experiences for future generative and agentic AI applications and experiences.
Together, NVIDIA and Nokia are opening up a new high-growth frontier for telecom providers by delivering distributed edge AI inference at scale to achieve global leadership in driving wireless innovation.