Nvidia and networking equipment giant Nokia are collaborating on a communication platform to launch AI-native 5G advanced and 6G networks on Nvidia’s commercial-grade AI-RAN products.
The companies said it’s the beginning of the AI-native wireless era and as part of the collaboration, Nvidia will invest $1 billion in Nokia.
According to market research firm Omdia, the AI-RAN market is expected to exceed a cumulative $200 billion by 2030 and is one of the fastest growing sectors in the wireless infrastructure market.
The deal will deliver distributed edge AI inferencing at scale, opening a new growth market for telecoms. As a result, U.S. telecom T-Mobile is collaborating with Nokia and Nvidia to drive and test AI-RAN technologies as part of 6G development.
Trials are expected to begin in 2026 and will focus on validation of performance and efficiency gains for users.
The goal is to bring massive improvements in performance and efficiency in networks to ensure consumers using generative, agentic and physical AI application on devices will have seamless network experiences, the companies said.
The collaboration will support future AI-native devices like:
- Drones
- Augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) glasses
- 6G integrated sensing and communication
“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.”
Future growth, future 6G
According to the companies, the AI-RAN platform will unify AI and radio access workloads for a cost-effective path to 6G. This includes future-proof investments for 6G and beyond to enable generative AI and agentic AI traffic on the same sites as RAN functions.
This is necessary as growth in AI traffic is exploding, the companies said. About 50% of ChatGPT’s 800 million weekly active users access the site via mobile devices and mobile app downloads exceed 40 million.
