NVIDIA, Nokia planning $1B, global-leading 6G AI platform

Oct. 28 (UPI) — NVIDIA is investing $1 billion to enable Nokia to accelerate its development of a world-leading 6G platform to support artificial intelligence mobile networks and networking infrastructure.

Nokia announced the $1 billion investment by NVIDIA on Tuesday, which gives NVIDIA shares in Nokia while providing the capital needed to speed up the development of 6G to replace the current 5G telecommunications cellular technology, according to CNBC.

“The partnership marks the beginning of the AI-native wireless era, providing the foundation to support AI-powered consumer experiences and enterprise services at the edge,” NVIDIA and Nokia officials announced in a joint news release.

NVIDIA is paying $6.01 per share to receive more than 166 million shares for its $1 billion investment in Nokia.

The announcement caused a 26% rise in Nokia shares after Nokia and NVIDIA agreed to the strategic partnership that enables Nokia to adapt its 5G and 6G software to run NVIDIA chips.

The two tech firms also will collaborate on developing networking technology that can support AI systems.

Nokia President and Chief Executive Officer Justin Hotard said the collaborative effort includes Dell Technologies and T-Mobile U.S. to “ensure America leads in the advanced global connectivity that AI needs.”

T-Mobile U.S. will work with Nokia and NVIDIA to incorporate AI-radio access network technology in the mobile telecommunications firm’s 6G.

The AI-RAN market is growing rapidly, and analyst firm Omdia has predicted it with exceed $200 billion in value by 2030, according to the joint news release.

“Telecommunications is a critical national infrastructure — the digital nervous system of our economy and security,” said Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and chief executive officer.

“AI-RAN will revolutionize telecommunications will revolutionize telecommunications [with] a generational platform shift that empowers the United States to regain global leadership of this vital infrastructure technology,” Huang added.

Dell Technologies founder, chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell said “the edge” is where data is created, and he called it the “most valuable real estate for AI.”

“We’ve built some of the world’s largest AI clusters with 100,000+ GPUs,” Dell said.

“Now we’re applying that expertise to distribute intelligence across millions of edge nodes,” he said. “The operators who modernize their infrastructure today won’t just carry AI traffic.

“They’ll be the distributed AI grid factories that process it as the source, where latency matters and data sovereignty is critical.”

Nokia and NVIDIA also will work together on AI networking and exploring optical technologies to improve the architecture of AI infrastructure.