Nvidia Takes $1 Billion Stake In Nokia (cnbc.com)
- Reference: 0179908688
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/29/2114253/nvidia-takes-1-billion-stake-in-nokia
- Source link: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/nvidia-nokia-ai.html
> The two companies also struck a strategic partnership to work together to develop next-generation 6G cellular technology. Nokia said that it would adapt its 5G and 6G software to run on Nvidia's chips, and will collaborate on networking technology for AI. Nokia said Nvidia would consider incorporating its technology into its future AI infrastructure plans. Nokia, a Finnish company, is best known for its early cellphones, but in recent years, it has primarily been a supplier of 5G cellular equipment to telecom providers.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/nvidia-nokia-ai.html
What kind of AI integration? (Score:1)
The only thing I can think of with AI integration into cellular is better adaptation mechanism for things like avoiding congested ranges faster, or maybe adapting better to uncommon situations like large public gatherings and general load balancing.
Does nvidia even make anything suitable for that sort of work though? Other than chips for potentially training algorithms for this sort of a thing? Or are they just thinking of moving from algorithmic to inference?
AI = subscription (Score:3)
That's all you really need to know. The AI runs in the cloud, the cloud is metered, therefore the AI-enabled anything is a subscription. Doesn't matter what it does. Doesn't have to be useful, or mandatory, but some compliance droid somewhere will make buzzword-of-the-week a necessity and you'll befored to subscribe in order to comply with the mandatory policy.
Re: (Score:1)
This is cool and all, but cellular networks have always been been B2B subscriptions. This isn't "mobile phone" Nokia, this is cellular infrastructure Nokia. Former Nokia Networks unit of Nokia.
It sells to telcos. With massive support contracts, because this sort of hardware needs constant support. There's no other way to get this hardware. So in this regard, this would change nothing. You're describing a status quo.
Tomorrow: Nokia takes an $1billion stake in nVidia (Score:2)
Let the inflation of the financial bubble continue!
Need a 6G Nokia Candybar Phone (Score:3)
They need to make Nokia 6300 in 6G. And they should make it in Finland. That's what the world *really* needs. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Why does the world need it made in Finland?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm being silly I suppose about making it in Finland. I could make a joke about how I want the phones to smell like rye bread and salmon.
But back in the day, that factory in Salo used to employ 20,000 people. But they cut staff there and then upstaffed by 20,000 in China. And these days, unemployment in Finland is quite high.
Re: (Score:2)
I see. Thanks for the clarification.
Nokia? (Score:2)
I thought Nokia was bought and killed off by Microsoft years ago. I didn't realize it was still around!
Re:Nokia? (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft bought the handset division, but Nokia is still a major provider of telecom equipment. (Newer "Nokia" phones are actually HMD using the brand under license.)
Here are my two cents: (Score:3)
If you can not do inference (not training, inference) on the device (for any definition of device) or can not wait for the data to arrive to a Hyperscaler Data Center, doing said inference on the shelter at the bottom of a mast, or failing that, the DataCenter where the regional 6G core is incarnated is a perfectly cromulent position to perform said inference.
Since 4G, and even before, we had ML on Telecommunication Networks. I can distinctly name 4 and 5G SON (Self Optimizing Networks), some preemtive alarm detection and correction in the Nokia NMS Subsystem, and when I was teaching CEMoD 16, we also had many of those. Changing the name of all that to AI, and stoping doing it in a system agnostic way with OpenCL and SYCL, and start doing it in a propiertary way with CUDA/nVIDIA only is a great way to attract 1 Milliard of fresh money, so congrats.
Also, I guess that possing as an american company when the company is ~75% European is great for the press releases.
As for nVIDIA, we all know that AI is a bubble, the questios are will it burst? will it deflate? when will that happen? nVIDIA is using their inflated share price to buy something that will not deflate or pop, just boring organic growth, driven by 6G (the digital G that will last 2 decades, instead of all the other Gs, that lasted 1). Good for them to diversify with cheap/inflated money. I'd have done the same.
Their rivals must be thinking why didn't I think of this first? and rightly so. Is an easy way to achieve a solid win-win for BOTH companies.
Nokia doesn't make phones (Score:2)
The Nokia-branded phones you see now are made by another Finnish company, HMD Global, that licenses the name. Nokia makes telecommunications infrastructure hardware.