Jen-Hsun Huang's $1 billion investment in Nokia: Ambition to earn $200 billion

Jen-Hsun Huang announced at the 2025 GTC that NVIDIA will invest $1 billion in Nokia to jointly develop AI-RAN technology, targeting the $200 billion RAN market. (Background: NVIDIA invests $1 billion in Nokia to become the largest shareholder! Nokia's stock surged 21%, what is Jen-Hsun Huang planning behind this?) (Supplementary background: Is Nokia launching a Web3 phone? Applying for digital asset encryption patents, optimistic about blockchain development) Jen-Hsun Huang made a big announcement at the 2025 GTC. At the 2025 GTC, Jen-Hsun Huang revealed that NVIDIA will invest $1 billion in Nokia. Yes, that's the Nokia, the mobile phone company that was popular across the land 20 years ago. Jen-Hsun Huang stated in his speech that the telecommunications network is undergoing a significant transition from traditional architecture to AI-native systems, and NVIDIA's investment will accelerate this process. Thus, NVIDIA will create an AI platform for 6G networks in collaboration with Nokia, embedding AI into the traditional RAN network. The specific investment form is that NVIDIA will subscribe to approximately 166 million new shares of Nokia at a price of $6.01 per share, which will give NVIDIA about 2.9% equity in Nokia. At the moment the partnership was announced, Nokia's stock price surged by 21%, the largest increase since 2013. What is AI-RAN? RAN stands for Radio Access Network, and AI-RAN is a new network architecture that embeds AI computing capabilities directly into wireless base stations. Traditional RAN systems mainly handle data transmission between base stations and mobile devices, while AI-RAN adds edge computing and intelligent processing capabilities on this basis. It allows base stations to apply AI algorithms to optimize spectrum utilization and energy efficiency, improving overall network performance, and can also leverage idle RAN assets to host edge AI services, creating new revenue streams for operators. Operators can run AI applications directly at the base station site without having to send all data back to central data centers for processing, significantly reducing the burden on the network. Jen-Hsun Huang gave an example that nearly 50% of ChatGPT users access it through mobile devices. Moreover, the monthly mobile download volume of ChatGPT has exceeded 40 million, and in an era of explosive growth in AI applications, traditional RAN systems cannot cope with generative AI and intelligent entity-dominated mobile networks. AI-RAN, through distributed AI reasoning capabilities provided at the edge, allows upcoming AI applications, such as intelligent entities and chatbots, to respond faster. At the same time, AI-RAN is also preparing for integrated sensing and communication applications in the 6G era. Jen-Hsun Huang cited a forecast from the analyst firm Omdia, which predicted that the RAN market will cumulatively exceed $200 billion by 2030, with the AI-RAN segment becoming the fastest-growing subfield. Nokia's President and CEO, Justin Hotard, stated in a joint statement that this partnership will put AI data centers in everyone’s pockets, achieving a fundamental redesign from 5G to 6G. He specifically mentioned that Nokia is collaborating with NVIDIA, Dell, and T-Mobile, three different types of companies. T-Mobile, as one of the first partners, will begin field testing of AI-RAN technology starting in 2026, focusing on verifying performance and efficiency improvements. Justin said that this testing will provide valuable data for 6G innovations, helping operators build intelligent networks that adapt to AI demands. Based on AI-RAN, NVIDIA has launched a new product called Aerial RAN Computer Pro (ARC-Pro), which is an accelerated computing platform prepared for 6G. Its core hardware configuration includes two types of NVIDIA GPUs: Grace CPU and Blackwell GPU. This platform runs on NVIDIA CUDA, allowing RAN software to be directly embedded into the CUDA technology stack. Therefore, it can not only handle traditional wireless access network functions but also run mainstream AI applications simultaneously. This is also NVIDIA's core method for realizing the two letters 'AI' in AI-RAN. Given CUDA's long history, the platform's greatest advantage is programmability. Not only that, Jen-Hsun Huang also announced that the Aerial software framework will be open-sourced, expected to be released on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license starting December 2025. The main difference between ARC-Pro and its predecessor ARC is deployment location and application scenario. The previous ARC was mainly used for centralized cloud RAN implementation, while ARC-Pro can be directly deployed at base station sites, enabling edge computing capabilities to truly take root. NVIDIA's telecommunications business leader, Roni Vashita, said that in the past, RAN and AI required two different sets of hardware to achieve functionality, but ARC-Pro can dynamically allocate computing resources based on network needs, prioritizing wireless access functions while running AI reasoning tasks during idle periods. ARC-Pro also integrates NVIDIA's AI Aerial platform, which is a complete software stack including CUDA-accelerated RAN software, Aerial Omniverse digital twin tools, and the new Aerial Framework. The Aerial Framework can convert Python code into high-performance CUDA code to run on the ARC-Pro platform. Additionally, the platform also supports AI-driven neural network models for advanced channel estimation. Jen-Hsun Huang stated that telecommunications are the digital nervous system of the economy and security. Collaboration with Nokia and the telecommunications ecosystem will ignite this revolution, helping operators build intelligent and adaptive networks that define the next generation of global connectivity. Looking ahead to 2025, NVIDIA has indeed invested a lot of money. On September 22, NVIDIA and OpenAI reached a partnership, and NVIDIA plans to gradually invest $100 billion in OpenAI, which will accelerate its infrastructure buildout. Jen-Hsun Huang said that OpenAI had sought NVIDIA's investment a long time ago, but at that time the company's funds were limited. He humorously remarked that they were so poor back then that they should have given all their money to them. Jen-Hsun Huang believes that the growth of AI reasoning is not 100 times or 1000 times, but 1 billion times. Moreover, this partnership is not limited to hardware but also includes software optimization to ensure that OpenAI can efficiently utilize NVIDIA's systems. This concern may stem from his awareness that OpenAI partnered with AMD and worried that OpenAI would abandon CUDA. If the world's largest AI foundational model does not use CUDA, it is understandable that other large model companies would follow OpenAI's example. Jen-Hsun Huang predicted on the BG2 podcast that OpenAI is likely to become the next trillion-dollar market capitalization company, with a growth rate that will set industry records. He refuted the AI bubble theory, pointing out that the global annual investment in AI infrastructure is…