NVIDIA and Nokia have entered into a strategic partnership to bring NVIDIA-powered, commercial-grade AI-RAN products into Nokia’s RAN portfolio. The collaboration aims to enable communication service providers to roll out AI-native 5G-Advanced and 6G networks built on NVIDIA platforms. As part of the deal, NVIDIA will invest $1 billion in Nokia at a subscription price of $6.01 per share, subject to customary closing conditions.
The companies described the agreement as the beginning of the AI-native wireless era, laying the groundwork for AI-driven consumer and enterprise services at the network edge. By combining resources, Nokia and NVIDIA plan to create distributed edge AI inferencing systems designed to scale across global telecom networks.
T-Mobile U.S. will collaborate with Nokia and NVIDIA to test and advance AI-RAN technologies as part of its 6G development program, with trials expected to begin in 2026. The collaboration will focus on network performance, efficiency gains, and the integration of generative, agentic, and physical AI applications.
“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.”
“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.
Growth in AI traffic continues to surge. Nearly half of ChatGPT’s 800 million weekly active users now access the service through mobile devices, while monthly mobile app downloads surpass 40 million. With Nokia and NVIDIA-powered AI-RAN systems, mobile operators can enhance both performance and efficiency, improving experiences for generative and agentic AI applications. They will also be able to introduce new AI-driven 6G services using the same infrastructure, supporting billions of emerging connections across drones, cars, robots, and AR/VR devices that require edge-based computing and sensing.
NVIDIA’s newly introduced Aerial RAN Computer Pro (ARC-Pro) platform combines connectivity, computing, and sensing capabilities, helping telecom providers transition from 5G-Advanced to 6G via software upgrades. Nokia will accelerate the rollout of its 5G and 6G RAN software on the NVIDIA CUDA® platform and embed ARC-Pro at the core of its new AI-RAN solution. Through its modular AirScale baseband architecture, Nokia aims to evolve seamlessly into the 5G-Advanced and 6G eras, maintaining compatibility across Cloud RAN and purpose-built RAN systems under its anyRAN approach.
NVIDIA and Nokia’s AI-RAN platform unifies AI and radio access workloads on a software-defined, accelerated infrastructure, enhancing performance, efficiency, and monetization while creating a cost-effective path to 6G. The platform allows new features to be added through software updates, ensuring future readiness while supporting rapid innovation cycles. By applying AI algorithms to improve spectral and energy efficiency, operators can optimize network performance and use underutilized RAN assets to host edge AI services for better returns.
The partnership will also extend to AI networking solutions. Both companies will integrate Nokia’s SR Linux software with NVIDIA’s Spectrum-X™ Ethernet networking platform and leverage Nokia’s telemetry and fabric management tools for NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure. Additionally, the collaboration will explore using Nokia’s optical technologies as part of future NVIDIA AI infrastructure architectures.