NVIDIA’s $1B bet on Nokia places AI at the heart of the race to 6G
NVIDIA’s $1 billion investment in Nokia and the accompanying technical pact mark a visible step in the industry’s attempt to graft AI onto the radio network. The deal also deepens NVIDIA’s role beyond GPUs into the architecture of global connectivity.
NVIDIA and Nokia have deepened a strategic tie that aims to remake mobile networks around artificial intelligence (AI), with the AI giant committing to buy roughly $1 billion of newly-issued Nokia shares and both firms agreeing to integrate NVIDIA’s accelerated computing into next generation radio access networks.
The move, unveiled at NVIDIA’s GTC event in Washington, signals an intensifying push to make mobile networks “AI native” and to prepare infrastructure for what both companies describe as a transition from 5G-Advanced to 6G.
Under the agreement, Nokia will embed an NVIDIA reference design, billed as ARC-Pro or the NVIDIA Arc Aerial RAN Computer, into a new AI-RAN product line. The platform is pitched as 6G ready and is intended to allow operators to run both traditional RAN workloads and edge AI inferencing on a common, accelerated software defined stack.
Dell Technologies will supply PowerEdge servers to help operators scale the compute footprint at sites and in edge facilities. T-Mobile US has been named as an early collaborator and plans field trials of the AI-RAN technology around 2026.
The partnership is part of NVIDIA’s broader strategy to move beyond data centres into new verticals that include telecoms, security and government infrastructure. It could accelerate the adoption of AI-based radio optimisations, energy management and new services that require real time inference near the user.
“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.”
Wider dealmaking streak
The Nokia announcement arrives amid a flurry of deals that underscore how NVIDIA is extending its influence across the AI ecosystem.
Last month, NVIDIA agreed to invest about $5 billion in Intel, a transaction aimed at fostering co-development of chips and systems for data centres and personal computers. That partnership is intended to combine NVIDIA’s AI accelerators with Intel’s CPUs and packaging capabilities.
Earlier this year NVIDIA and OpenAI revealed a large-scale cooperation under which NVIDIA committed to supply systems and to back expanded infrastructure deployments for the model developer. That arrangement was presented as part of a sweeping effort to meet the massive compute demand of advanced generative models.
At GTC the company also announced new alliances with software and security vendors. NVIDIA and Palantir said they would integrate NVIDIA accelerated computing and models into Palantir’s enterprise platform to operationalise AI for logistics and other business use cases. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike unveiled collaboration with NVIDIA to develop continuously learning, always on AI agents for defence at the edge.
NVIDIA has also been strengthening long standing ties with cloud providers such as Google Cloud to deliver accelerated enterprise AI offerings.
Edited by Megha Reddy