NVIDIA Invests $1 Billion in Nokia

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3, 2025 – NVIDIA announced Tuesday that it will invest $1 billion for a 2.9 percent stake in Nokia to bring AI into the core of future wireless networks.

The deal pairs NVIDIA’s artificial intelligence chips with Nokia’s radio access network, laying the groundwork for what both companies call the AI-native era of wireless, where networks manage and optimize themselves using machine learning.

For Nokia, the influx of cash offers breathing room after a rough stretch in its mobile networks business, which posted a quarterly loss earlier this year. For NVIDIA, the deal provides an entry point into a wireless equipment market that has been slow to embrace its high-performance graphics processing units.

Under the partnership, Nokia will use NVIDIA’s new Aerial RAN, a computing platform that enables telcos to move from 5G to 6G through software upgrades. 

T-Mobile will be the first carrier to test the new technology in 2026, while Dell Technologies will supply the servers that run it. Together, the companies hope to prepare U.S. networks for the next generation of connectivity known as 6G, expected later this decade.

The companies say AI-RAN, short for AI-powered Radio Access Network, could help networks predict congestion, allocate resources automatically, and process data closer to users.

“Telecommunications is the digital nervous system of our economy and security,” said NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, calling AI-driven networks a “generational platform shift” that could help the United States regain global leadership in telecom technology.

Nokia CEO Justin Hotard said the move represents “a fundamental redesign of the network” to handle the explosion of data from AI applications, from drones to augmented reality devices. 

Shares of Nokia rose nearly 21 percent following the announcement, hitting their highest level in a decade following the announcement.

With the AI-RAN market projected to exceed $200 billion by 2030, Nokia’s wager aligns it with the biggest chipmaker in the world.