FILE PHOTO: Nvidia | Photo credit: Dado Ruvic
Nvidia has partnered with a group of telecommunications companies including Nokia Oyj, SoftBank Group Corp. and T-Mobile US Inc., which will work to build sixth-generation networks based on computers and software that can use AI to help direct radio traffic safely and efficiently.
The change is necessary because of the countless devices that will be connected to networks in the future and their more complex requirements, Nvidia said on Sunday in a statement timed to the opening of a telecom industry conference in Barcelona. The current generation, 5G, is designed to connect people via voice and data and provide requested information. It is unable to support the widespread use of AI, Nvidia said.
“Today’s networks are simply not ready for tomorrow’s use cases,” said Ronnie Vasishta, head of Nvidia’s telecommunications operations and strategy. “In the AI era, everything changes. Networks will deliver intelligence not just to people on their phones, but to machines as well.”
Telecommunications networks will need “hundreds of thousands of times” more efficiency because there is not enough radio spectrum to support the new applications, he said.
The chipmaker, whose equipment is at the center of the AI explosion, is trying to tap into a new market and clear a potential roadblock. Nvidia already offers versions of its chips, computers and software for use in networks and hopes to expand that business. At the same time, the company needs AI to spread into more areas – in things called physical AI, such as robots and vehicles – to continue driving demand and paying for the data centers that are currently the biggest consumers of its technology. Without wireless networks capable of AI traffic, Nvidia’s vision of a world full of humanoid robots and self-driving cars could be slower to materialize.
Roughly every ten years, the telecommunications industry shifts to a new generation of wireless technology, the next ‘G’. In the lead-up to establishing standards that determine the parameters of new hardware and software, companies are forming alliances to steer the industry in a direction that they believe will favor their products. This approach has a mixed reputation and has been undermined by competing efforts that have sometimes delayed new deployments or resulted in networks that are incompatible.
Nvidia states that new equipment and software must be fundamentally open. Instead of locked devices with custom hardware, the radios that send and receive wireless traffic should be controlled by updatable software that runs on more general-purpose computers. Data traffic must be routed by AI software that is able to respond to rapidly changing patterns and priorities in a way that is simply not possible at the moment, the chipmaker said.
In such an environment, the telecommunications industry will be much more open to the emergence of new providers, including startups that can quickly reach billion-dollar valuations, Nvidia’s Vasishta said.
“This will be how a new telecom unicorn is born,” he said. There have been far too few new entrants into the sector over the past decade, he added.
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Published on March 1, 2026
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