Global technology leaders NVIDIA and Nokia announced a landmark partnership designed to bring AI-native mobile networks to the forefront of telecommunications infrastructure. The collaboration centres on embedding NVIDIA-powered, commercial-grade AI-RAN (Radio Access Network) products into Nokia’s world-leading RAN portfolio, enabling operators to deploy AI-driven 5G Advanced and 6G networks at scale.
As part of the deal, NVIDIA will invest USD 1 billion in Nokia at a subscription price of $6.01 per share, subject to standard closing conditions.
A Turning Point for Telecom Infrastructure
The partnership marks the dawn of the AI-native wireless era, providing the foundational infrastructure to support emerging AI-powered consumer experiences and enterprise services at the network edge. Analysts project the AI-RAN sector could surpass $200 billion in cumulative market opportunity by 2030.
Under this agreement, telecom operators such as T‑Mobile U.S. will collaborate with Nokia and NVIDIA starting in 2026 to conduct field trials of AI-RAN technologies as part of their 6G development programmes. These tests will focus on delivering performance and efficiency enhancements to support consumers using generative, agentic and physical AI applications on mobile and edge devices.
Future-Proof Infrastructure: From 5G-Advanced to 6G
NVIDIA is introducing the ARC‑Pro Aerial RAN Computer a 6G-ready accelerated computing platform that combines connectivity, computing and sensing capabilities. It enables network operators to transition from current 5G-Advanced networks to future 6G infrastructure via software upgrades.
Meanwhile, Nokia will accelerate availability of its 5G and 6G RAN software on NVIDIA’s CUDA® platform and expand its modular AirScale baseband architecture to embed the ARC-Pro platform at the core of AI-RAN evolution. This “anyRAN” approach allows both Cloud RAN and purpose-built RAN deployments to evolve without replacing existing infrastructure.
Together, the two companies aim to unify AI and radio-access workloads on a software-defined, accelerated infrastructure increasing performance, energy and spectral efficiency, enabling new edge AI services, and maximising return on investment through software-driven evolution.
Quotes From Leadership
“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 centre 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 centre into everyone’s pocket,” said Justin Hotard, President and CEO of Nokia. “We’re proud to drive this industry transformation with NVIDIA, Dell Technologies, and T-Mobile U.S., our first AI-RAN deployments in T-Mobile’s network will ensure America leads in the advanced connectivity that AI needs.”
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“With America’s best network, T-Mobile remains committed to advancing next-generation technologies that redefine the customer experience,” said John Saw, President of Technology and Chief Technology Officer at T-Mobile. “Our collaboration with industry leaders Nokia and NVIDIA marks an important step toward shaping the future of connectivity as we develop the innovations that will power the 6 G era. Beginning in 2026, T-Mobile will conduct field evaluations and testing of advanced AI-RAN technologies to ensure they meet the evolving needs of our customers as we move toward 6 G.”
“The telecommunications industry owns the most valuable real estate for AI the edge, where data is created,” said Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO 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. The operators who modernize their infrastructure today won’t just carry AI traffic they’ll be the distributed AI grid factories that process it at the source, where latency matters and data sovereignty is critical.”
Expanding AI Networking Capabilities
In addition to AI-RAN, Nokia and NVIDIA will jointly explore broader AI-networking solutions. These include data-centre switching leveraging Nokia’s SR Linux software for the NVIDIA Spectrum‑X Ethernet networking platform, as well as integrating Nokia’s telemetry and fabric-management tools within NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure. The collaboration may also expand to Nokia’s optical-networking technologies, feeding into future NVIDIA AI infrastructure architecture.