Nvidia to invest US$1 billion in Nokia in AI networking push

Nvidia Corp. plans to make a US$1 billion equity investment in Nokia Oyj, an apparent vindication of the Finnish company’s pivot from mobile networking kit into artificial intelligence by the sector’s kingmaker.

Nokia will issue about 166 million shares to Nvidia at US$6.01 apiece, giving Nvidia a 2.9 per cent stake in the Finnish company, the companies said in a statement on Tuesday. Nvidia’s chips will be used to accelerate Nokia’s software for 5G and 6G networks and Nvidia will explore ways to use Nokia’s data centre technology in its AI infrastructure, they said.

Nokia, best known for selling mobile network parts, has been pushing into data centres – a business that’s growing thanks to the growing demand for computing capacity from the artificial intelligence boom. The move has paid off, and helped Nokia beat Wall Street estimates last quarter. The Espoo, Finland-based company earlier this year bought Infinera Corp. for US$2.3 billion to expand into networking products for AI data centres.

Chief executive officer Justin Hotard is leading a major turnaround of the Nordic company, emphasising its position as the only Western alternative to Huawei Technologies for supplying the entire portfolio of communications kit, from 5G radios to fiber optic cables.

Nvidia has been on a major spending spree in recent months. The company said it will invest as much as US$100 billion into OpenAI as well as billions into autonomous vehicle companies Wayve and Oxa, fintech Revolut and AI companies like PolyAI. The company also will invest half a billion into building a new data centre with Deutsche Telekom, Bloomberg News reported earlier.

European policymakers and tech executives alike have been talking for months about the need for the bloc to develop its own AI ecosystem and catch up to rivals in the US and China. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and others have criticised Europe for being too slow to develop its own infrastructure and support companies that want to use AI while keeping their data within the region. BLOOMBERG