The alliance marks the beginning of the AI-native wireless era, laying the foundation to support AI-powered consumer experiences and enterprise services at the edge.
In addition, the alliance addresses the rapidly growing AI-RAN market, which represents a significant opportunity within the RAN market, expected to exceed $200 billion cumulatively by 2030, according to analysis firm Omdia.
Together, NVIDIA and Nokia are also laying the foundation for strategic infrastructure and opening a new high-growth frontier for telecom providers by offering distributed AI inference at the edge at scale.
T-Mobile US will also collaborate with Nokia and NVIDIA to advance and test AI-RAN technologies as part of its 6G innovation and development process. Testing is expected to begin in 2026, focusing on field validation of performance and efficiency improvements for customers.
This measure will improve performance and efficiency, helping to ensure that consumers using generative, agent-based, and physical AI applications on their devices enjoy a seamless network experience. It will also support future AI-native devices, such as drones and augmented and virtual reality glasses, while being ready for 6G applications, such as sensing and integrated communications.
“Telecommunications is a critical national infrastructure, the digital nervous system of our economy and our security,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Powered by NVIDIA CUDA and AI, AI-RAN will revolutionize telecommunications, a generational platform shift that will enable the United States to regain global leadership in this vital infrastructure technology. Together with Nokia and the U.S. telecommunications ecosystem, we are driving this revolution, equipping operators to build intelligent, adaptive networks that will define the next generation of global connectivity.”
“The next leap in telecommunications isn’t just from 5G to 6G, but a fundamental network redesign to deliver AI-powered connectivity, capable of processing intelligence from the data center to the edge. Our partnership with NVIDIA and its investment in Nokia will accelerate innovation in AI-RAN to put an AI data center in everyone’s pocket,” said Justin Hotard, president and CEO of Nokia. “We are proud to drive this industry transformation with NVIDIA, Dell Technologies, and T-Mobile US. Our first AI-RAN deployments on the T-Mobile network will ensure the US leads the way in the advanced connectivity that AI needs.”
Supporting the Exponential Growth of AI Traffic:
AI traffic growth is experiencing a spectacular boom. For example, nearly 50% of ChatGPT's 800 million weekly active users access the site via mobile devices, and monthly downloads of its mobile app exceed 40 million.
With Nokia and NVIDIA's AI-RAN systems, mobile operators can improve performance and efficiency, as well as enhance network experiences for future generative and agentive AI applications and experiences. They will be able to introduce new AI services for 6G using the same infrastructure, powering billions of new connections for cars, robots, drones, and augmented and virtual reality glasses that demand connectivity, computing, and sensing at the edge.
Seamless Transition to AI-Native Networks:
NVIDIA introduces Aerial RAN Computer Pro (ARC-Pro), a 6G-ready accelerated computing platform that combines connectivity, computing, and sensing capabilities, enabling telecom companies to move from 5G-Advanced to 6G through software upgrades.
The NVIDIA ARC-Pro reference design is available for network equipment manufacturers and vendors to build commercial or proprietary AI-RAN products, compatible with both new builds and upgrades of existing base stations.
Nokia will accelerate the availability of its 5G and 6G RAN software on the NVIDIA CUDA® platform and expand its RAN portfolio by incorporating NVIDIA ARC-Pro at the core of its new AI-RAN solution. This partnership will enable Nokia's mobile network customers to seamlessly transition from current RAN networks to future AI-RAN networks.
Nokia's unique anyRAN approach simplifies the introduction of the ARC-Pro platform by establishing a software-defined RAN evolution for both Cloud RAN and dedicated RANs. The AirScale baseband is a modular architecture where new cards can coexist with previously deployed cards. Nokia intends to extend and evolve its AirScale baseband into the 5G-Advanced and 6G era with new AI-RAN capabilities.
Dell Technologies is driving innovation in Nokia's AI-RAN solution with its next-generation Dell PowerEdge servers. Designed for seamless scalability, these servers enable zero-touch software upgrades and low-touch silicon upgrades, ensuring a smooth evolution from 5G to 5G Advanced and 6G. With their robust, high-performance infrastructure, Dell PowerEdge servers are the ultimate computing platform for operators deploying AI-RAN solutions.
Future-proof with 6G:
The Nokia and NVIDIA AI-RAN platform unifies AI and radio access workloads in an accelerated, software-defined infrastructure, boosting performance, efficiency, and monetization while enabling a smooth and cost-effective transition to 6G.
New capabilities are added through software updates, future-proofing investments for 6G and beyond, and enabling rapid innovation cycles at the pace of AI. It serves the growing traffic of generative and agentive AI in the same locations as RAN functions, applying AI algorithms to improve spectral and energy efficiency, as well as overall network performance, and leveraging underutilized RAN assets to host edge AI services and maximize ROI.
“With the best network in America, T-Mobile remains committed to driving next-generation technologies that redefine the customer experience,” said John Saw, T-Mobile’s president of technology and chief technology officer. “Our collaboration with industry leaders Nokia and NVIDIA is a significant step toward shaping the future of connectivity as we develop the innovations that will power the 6G era. Building on the foundation laid by the AI-RAN Innovation Center in 2024, this strategic initiative reinforces T-Mobile’s leadership in driving America’s wireless industry forward. Beginning in 2026, T-Mobile will conduct field evaluations and testing of advanced AI-RAN technologies to ensure they meet our customers’ evolving needs as we move toward 6G.”
“The telecommunications industry owns the most valuable asset for AI: the edge, where data is created,” said Michael Dell, president 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 more than 100,000 GPUs. Now we’re applying that expertise to distribute intelligence across millions of edge nodes. Operators who modernize their infrastructure today will not only be carrying AI traffic, but will be the distributed AI network factories processing it at the source, where latency matters and data sovereignty is critical.”
Additional cooperation on AI networking solutions
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 to NVIDIA's AI infrastructure.
