Why Nvidia Is Betting $1 Billion on Nokia
The chipmaker’s latest move turns cell towers into AI hubs, positioning Nvidia to dominate the next frontier of intelligent networks.
Nvidia has just made a calculated move to dominate the next frontier of artificial intelligence. Yesterday, the chipmaker announced a $1 billion investment in Nokia, purchasing 166 million shares at $6.01 each. The deal sent the Finnish telecom giant’s stock soaring 22% in a single day, Nokia’s biggest jump in more than a decade.
Under the partnership, Nvidia will supply AI-powered chips to accelerate Nokia’s 5G and 6G network software, while Nokia’s data-center technology becomes part of Nvidia’s expanding AI infrastructure.
This collaboration centers on a breakthrough concept known as AI-RAN (Artificial Intelligence Radio Access Networks). Traditional cellular networks are passive systems that simply move data from your phone to the internet. AI-RAN turns those pipes intelligent, optimizing performance in real time, managing traffic automatically, and even running AI applications directly at the network’s edge rather than in distant data centers.
Oyinebiladou Omemu
Nvidia and Nokia’s new platform effectively puts a miniature AI data center inside every cell tower. The network can adjust signal strength based on crowd density, reroute traffic before congestion builds, and process AI requests locally.
This Nokia deal also adds another brick to Nvidia’s investment spree in 2025. Just weeks earlier, the company committed $100 billion to OpenAI for compute capacity, pledged $5 billion to Intel to secure domestic chip production, and poured hundreds of millions into self-driving startup Wayve and U.K. cloud provider Nscale. The pattern is clear that Nvidia is building an ecosystem where its technology becomes indispensable across the entire AI stack.
You might be wondering, why telecom? Well, because data-center spending is projected to exceed $1.7 trillion by 2030, driven almost entirely by AI expansion, according to McKinsey. For Nokia, the partnership is both a lifeline and a relaunch. Its Swedish rival Ericsson now faces a competitor backed by Nvidia’s AI muscle, while Huawei remains limited by U.S. trade restrictions. Carriers such as T-Mobile are already trialling AI-RAN technologies with both companies ahead of the 6G era in 2026.
By embedding AI directly into network infrastructure, Nvidia and Nokia are enabling edge computing at scale, where data is processed on the spot rather than sent to far-off servers. That shift could power the next generation of autonomous vehicles, real-time AR experiences, and intelligent cities.
The takeaway
Nvidia’s investment in Nokia signals a new phase of the AI race, where connectivity itself becomes the intelligence layer. The question now is not just who builds the chips, but who owns the networks they’ll run on.
Kelechi Edeh
