WASHINGTON, DC (GTC), Oct 30, 2025 – NVIDIA and Nokia have formed a partnership to add NVIDIA-powered AI-RAN products to Nokia’s RAN portfolio. The collaboration will help communication service providers deploy AI-native 5G-advanced and 6G networks using NVIDIA platforms.
NVIDIA will invest $1 billion in Nokia. The companies plan to expand the AI-RAN segment, which will exceed a cumulative $200 billion by 2030, according to analyst firm Omdia1.
T-Mobile U.S. will work with Nokia and NVIDIA to develop and test AI-RAN technologies as part of 6G research and development efforts. Trials are planned for 2026 to evaluate performance and energy efficiency improvements.
The initiative aims to enhance network reliability for users running generative AI, agentic and physical AI applications. It will also support emerging use cases such as drones, augmented reality and virtual reality, and prepare for future 6G capabilities including integrated sensing and communications.
“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. “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.”
Supporting Exponential Growth in AI Traffic
Nokia and NVIDIA are developing AI-RAN systems to help mobile operators improve network performance and efficiency amid rising AI traffic. The technology will enable future 6G networks to support generative AI, autonomous systems, and edge-connected devices such as drones, cars, robots and augmented- and virtual-reality glasses that demand connectivity, computing and sensing at the edge.
Seamless Transition to AI-Native Networks
NVIDIA has introduced Aerial RAN Computer Pro (ARC-Pro), a 6G computing platform that integrates connectivity, computing, and sensing. The platform allows telcos to upgrade from 5G-advanced to 6G through software updates.
The NVIDIA ARC-Pro reference design is available to manufacturers and network equipment providers for developing commercial or AI-RAN products. It supports both new buildouts and expansions to existing base stations.
Nokia will accelerate the deployment of its 5G and 6G RAN software on the NVIDIA CUDA platform and embed ARC-Pro into its AI-RAN solutions. The integration will enable Nokia’s mobile network customers to transition from RAN systems to AI-RAN networks.
Nokia’s anyRAN framework simplifies the adoption of the ARC-Pro platform by enabling software-defined RAN evolution for Cloud RAN and RAN. Its modular AirScale baseband architecture allows new cards to operate alongside existing ones. Nokia plans to extend AirScale into the 5G-advanced and 6G era with AI-RAN capabilities.
Dell Technologies supports Nokia’s AI-RAN solution with Dell PowerEdge servers for upgrades. The servers enable software and silicon updates with minimal intervention, providing a high-performance computing platform for operators moving from 5G to 6G networks.
Future-Proofed for 6G
Nokia and NVIDIA’s AI-RAN platform unify AI and radio access workloads on a software-defined, accelerated infrastructure, boosting performance, efficiency and monetization while enabling a cost-effective path to 6G.
New capabilities are added through software updates, future-proofing investments for 6G and beyond, while enabling rapid innovation cycles at the pace of AI. It serves generative AI and agentic AI traffic on the same sites as RAN functions, applying AI algorithms to improve spectral and energy efficiency, as well as overall network performance, and by tapping into underutilized RAN assets to host edge AI services and maximize return on investment.
“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 6G era. Building on the foundation established by the AI-RAN Innovation Center in 2024, this strategic initiative reinforces T-Mobile’s leadership in driving the U.S. wireless industry forward. 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 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. 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.”
Additional AI Networking Solutions Cooperation
Nokia and NVIDIA will also collaborate on AI networking solutions, including data center switching with Nokia’s SR Linux software for the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform and the application of Nokia’s telemetry and fabric management platform on NVIDIA AI infrastructure.
The companies will also explore the use of Nokia’s optical technologies as part of future NVIDIA AI infrastructure architecture.
(1) OMDIA: RAN Market Tracker – 2Q25, Radio Access Network (RAN) market size & forecast, CY25 to CY30
Source: NVIDIA
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA, founded in 1993 and headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, designs and manufactures graphics processing units, systems on chips, networking hardware, and AI intelligence software such as CUDA. Its products serve industries including gaming, data centers, autonomous vehicles, professional visualization, robotics, health care, and energy. The company introduced the GPU in 1999 and later expanded into accelerated computing and AI infrastructure. In gaming, its GPUs support high-performance rendering, while in AI and high-performance computing, its systems provide the infrastructure for training and deploying large-scale models. NVIDIA also develops tools for robotics and autonomous driving. For the fiscal quarter ending in July 2025, the company reported revenue of $46.7B and net income of $26.4B.
About Nokia
Nokia Corporation, founded in 1865 and headquartered in Espoo, Finland, develops telecommunications and networking technology for global markets. The company’s portfolio includes mobile and fixed network infrastructure, 5G systems, cloud solutions, and digital services. Nokia serves industries such as telecommunications, energy, transportation, public sector, and defense. As of 2024, the company employs about 87,000 people worldwide and reported annual revenue of €22.3B. Nokia Bell Labs, its research arm, leads innovation and intellectual property development. The company focuses on building high-performance networks that integrate across mobile, fixed, and cloud systems, enabling secure, reliable, and sustainable digital services for service providers, enterprises, and partners worldwide.