Wedoany.com Report-Oct. 30, Nokia and Nvidia have announced a strategic collaboration to develop AI-powered 5G-Advanced and 6G networks, marking a major step toward the AI-native wireless era. As part of the deal, Nvidia will invest $1 billion in Nokia, becoming one of its largest shareholders. The partnership targets the fast-growing AI-RAN market, which analyst firm Omdia projects will exceed $200 billion by 2030.

The collaboration will establish a foundation for distributed edge AI inferencing at scale, allowing communication service providers (CSPs) to deliver new classes of intelligent and low-latency services. Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said: “Telecommunications is a critical national infrastructure, the digital nervous system of our economy and security. Built on Nvidia CUDA and AI, AI-RAN will revolutionise 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.”

T-Mobile US will work with both Nokia and Nvidia to test and validate AI-RAN technologies as part of its 6G roadmap, with field trials scheduled for 2026. These tests aim to measure performance, energy efficiency, and user experience in real-world conditions. Nokia President and CEO Justin Hotard stated: “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 will accelerate AI-RAN innovation to put an AI data centre into everyone’s pocket. We’re proud to drive this industry transformation with Nvidia, Dell Technologies, and T-Mobile US.”

At the heart of the collaboration is Nvidia’s Aerial RAN Computer Pro (ARC-Pro), a 6G-ready computing platform that integrates connectivity, computing, and sensing capabilities. This system will enable CSPs to transition from 5G-Advanced to 6G through software upgrades rather than costly infrastructure replacements. Nokia will integrate ARC-Pro into its new AI-RAN solution and expand its AirScale baseband portfolio to support both cloud-based and purpose-built RAN systems.

Dell Technologies will contribute to the ecosystem by providing its PowerEdge servers to power AI-RAN operations. Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO Michael Dell commented: “The telecommunications industry owns the most valuable real estate for AI, the edge, where data is created. This AI-RAN collaboration with Nokia and Nvidia makes that potential real. The operators who modernise their infrastructure today won’t just carry AI traffic, they’ll be the distributed AI grid factories that process it at the source.”

John Saw, President of Technology and CTO at T-Mobile, added: “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.”

The Nokia–Nvidia AI-RAN solution will unify AI and radio workloads on a software-defined, accelerated infrastructure to enhance scalability, energy efficiency, and performance. It will support applications such as generative AI, drones, AR/VR, and autonomous systems through edge integration. The two companies will also collaborate on AI networking solutions by integrating Nokia’s SR Linux software with Nvidia’s Spectrum-X Ethernet platform and exploring new optical technologies to advance future AI infrastructure.