Nvidia to Make $1 billion Equity Investment in Nokia

Nokia will issue over 166 million new shares in a directed share issuance to enable Nvidia to make a $1 billion equity investment in the company. Subject to certain conditions, Nvidia will subscribe for the shares at a subscription price of $6.01 per share. The transaction will see Nvidia become a 2.90% shareholder of Nokia.

The strategic partnership and investment are expected to create significant value for both companies. Nokia will use the proceeds from the issuance to accelerate its strategic plans to advance trusted connectivity for the AI supercycle and other general corporate purposes. Vendor intends to accelerate development of 5G and 6G RAN software to run on Nvidia’s architecture and will make investments to drive Nokia’s strategic goal of increasing its presence in the AI & Cloud market with data center-aligned networking solutions within its Network Infrastructure business. The two companies agreed to collaborate on AI networking solutions and explore opportunities to incorporate Nokia’s data center switching and optical technologies in NVIDIA’s future AI infrastructure architecture.

Nokia and Nvidia separately stated the AI-RAN work would act as a foundation for distributed edge inferencing, along with fresh services for consumers and enterprises. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes the developments will contribute to the US efforts to regain global leadership in telecoms infrastructure by making it a frontrunner in AI-RAN. He added that Nvidia and Nokia are igniting an AI-RAN revolution, equipping operators to build intelligent, adaptive networks that will define the next generation of global connectivity.

Nokia CEO Justin Hotard said the tie-up is necessary because the next leap in telecom isn’t just from 5G to 6G, it’s a fundamental redesign of the network, involving AI connectivity, which can process intelligence from the data center all the way to the edge. Nvidia and Nokia predict AI-RAN will provide a bump in mobile network performance and efficiency required by current and future iterations of the technology.