Nokia shares went wild Tuesday, jumping by 21% after the company said Nvidia is throwing in $1 billion for a 2.9% stake.
The Finnish telecom equipment maker will issue over 166 million new shares to lock in the deal, and every cent is going toward AI and corporate projects. Nokia’s stock had initially spiked 26% when the news dropped.
This move isn’t just about cash; it’s also about control of the future of mobile networks. As part of the deal, Nokia and Nvidia agreed to team up on 6G.
Nokia will also make its 5G and 6G software work on Nvidia’s chips, and both firms plan to build new networking systems for AI infrastructure. Nvidia might even slot Nokia’s tech into its own upcoming AI systems.
Nokia connects with Nvidia to push 6G and AI networks
Nokia has come a long way from old-school flip phones. These days, it supplies 5G hardware to major telecoms.
With this Nvidia partnership, Nokia’s now gunning for the AI-powered 6G era. The company said this deal will help modernize its software stack, while Nvidia could include Nokia gear in future data center builds.
Both companies are expected to go deeper into this partnership during Nvidia’s developer event in Washington, D.C., where CEO Jensen Huang is already scheduled to speak to a packed house of U.S. lawmakers and officials.
The location is part of Nvidia’s full-court press to keep itself squarely at the center of U.S. tech strategy.
Nvidia’s been writing big checks lately. In September, it dropped $5 billion into Intel, a former rival. It also pledged $100 billion toward OpenAI, and wrote checks for $500 million to Wayve, a self-driving startup, and $667 million to Nscale, a cloud company in the U.K.
This Nokia move is just the latest piece of that puzzle. Nvidia’s new Blackwell GPUs are now being mass-produced, not in Taiwan, but in Arizona. That’s new. At the GTC event on Tuesday, Jensen said 6 million Blackwell chips had shipped in the last four quarters.
He projected $500 billion in sales when adding in the upcoming Rubin chips. Jensen said this reshoring move was at the request of Donald Trump.
“The first thing that President Trump asked me for is bring manufacturing back,” Jensen said. “Bring manufacturing back because it’s necessary for national security. Bring manufacturing back because we want the jobs. We want that part of the economy.”
Nvidia pushes U.S. dominance, battles export rules on China
Nvidia’s making a strong case in D.C., it wants to stay at the center of the U.S. AI supply chain and avoid more export restrictions. At the event, Nvidia showed off U.S.-based chip production and assembly, with Blackwell wafers now being made in Phoenix.
Kari Briski, Nvidia’s VP of generative AI for enterprise, said, “Nvidia is a proud American company building the U.S. AI infrastructure that will ensure our country leads the world in shaping the future of innovation.”
But not everything is going smoothly. In April, the U.S. government told Nvidia that its China-specific H20 chip would still need a license. Nvidia said in May that it could’ve made $10.5 billion in sales from that chip in just two quarters if the restrictions weren’t in place.
Jensen visited Washington again in July and pushed for approval to sell the H20 in China. The Trump administration said yes, on the condition that Nvidia pays 15% of its China revenue back to the U.S.
But despite that greenlight, Jensen said earlier this month that Nvidia is “100% out of China” for now. No new Blackwell-based chip for China has been revealed.
Jensen also said Nvidia planned to host its D.C. conference so Trump could attend. But Trump was traveling in Asia, and instead told reporters he’ll meet with Jensen on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
That meeting will happen just as Nvidia tries to convince policymakers it’s too important to restrict. The company says cutting off U.S. chips to China only pushes developers there to build homegrown alternatives. Jensen’s goal is to make sure they stay hooked on Nvidia silicon.
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