In a surprise appearance at T-Mobile’s Capital Markets Day last week, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang shared a bold vision for the future of telecommunications.
“We’ve fused signal processing and AI,” Huang declared during a fireside chat with T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert. “This is going to be a great new growth opportunity for the telecommunications industry.”
Huang’s remarks came alongside Nvidia’s announcement of its groundbreaking AI Aerial platform which promises to reshape wireless networks by integrating AI and radio access networks – AI-RAN. The platform is designed to optimise network performance, efficiency and new revenue potential such as AI-computing-as-a-service during periods when network infrastructure is underutilized – maximising the return on assets.
During the conversation, Huang emphasised the importance of AI in shaping the future of telecommunications, particularly highlighting the role of AI-RAN in optimising and scaling network performance. Fusing radio computing and AI computing into one architecture allows companies to apply AI models to optimise signal quality across diverse environments, Huang says.
He adds that this fusion would lead to improved network efficiency and new growth opportunities for the telecommunications industry.
“We could teach these AI models how to optimise signal quality in hundreds of thousands of virtual cities,” Huang says.
AI-RAN aligns with Nvidia’s broader vision to make AI an integral part of network infrastructure enabling telecommunications providers to unlock new revenue streams and deliver enhanced experiences through generative AI, robotics, and autonomous technologies.
Huang underscored the synergies between Nvidia and T-Mobile, particularly their collaboration with Ericsson and Nokia on the newly announced AI-RAN Innovation Centre which is set to accelerate the commercialisation of AI-RAN technologies.
Every radio operates in a unique and constantly changing world environment. This is where deep reinforcement learning algorithms embedded into radio signal processing make complex computations simpler with AI to help deliver a customer-centric network experience.
Sievert emphasised how virtualising RAN into the cloud will create new business opportunities. He explains that AI workloads will increasingly require compute power located close to the customer, leveraging underutilised network resources.
Huang also highlighted the crucial role AI will play in making networks more energy-efficient, emphasising the need for sustainable technology as the demand for data and connectivity grows.
“We have to use AI to reduce energy consumption,” Huang says. “Everything that we accelerate, everything that we teach an AI model to do [we] will do a lot more energy efficiently.”
As Huang explains, by simulating AI models in virtual environments with accurate physics and then emulating them in the real world, Nvidia maximises energy efficiency. This approach underpins the Nvidia AI Aerial suite of platforms for designing, training, and deploying AI-driven cellular networks for AI.
With Nvidia AI Aerial now supporting a growing ecosystem of partners, he adds, this collaboration marks a milestone in the telecom industry’s journey toward a future powered by AI.