NVIDIA forms global telecom coalition around open, AI-native 6G

What NVIDIA announced at MWC

On March 1, 2026, NVIDIA said it had assembled a broad coalition of telecom operators, network suppliers, and public-interest organizations to build 6G on open and secure AI-native platforms. The group includes Booz Allen, BT Group, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, MITRE, Nokia, ODC, SK Telecom, SoftBank Corp., T-Mobile, and the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation.

NVIDIA says the goal is to make the next wireless generation open, intelligent, resilient, and trustworthy from the start. The company argues that future networks will have to do more than carry traffic efficiently. They will need to coordinate AI-heavy sensing, decision-making, automation, and orchestration across radio access, edge systems, and the core network, all while staying interoperable and easier to secure.

Why NVIDIA is pushing AI deeper into telecom

The company’s central claim is that 6G will become the fabric for physical AI. In NVIDIA’s framing, autonomous machines, vehicles, sensors, and robots will depend on networks that can support distributed intelligence in real time. That is why the company is pushing AI-RAN and software-defined architectures as the basis for the next standards cycle, rather than treating AI as an optional feature layered on top of existing telecom designs.

The press release also places this effort inside a broader campaign. NVIDIA says it is a founding member of the AI-RAN Alliance, which it says now includes more than 130 participating companies. It also pointed to the AI-WIN initiative launched in the United States in October 2025 and separate 6G collaborations spanning Korea, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Japan.

What this means for the 6G race

The practical implication is that 6G planning is already becoming a contest over AI infrastructure strategy, not just over radios, spectrum, and standards committees. By centering open platforms, interoperability, and supply-chain resilience, NVIDIA and its partners are trying to influence how operators and governments think about trust, vendor diversity, and national competitiveness before 6G architecture is locked in.

If that strategy succeeds, the next wireless cycle could look less like a pure telecom upgrade and more like a market for programmable AI infrastructure. That would give GPU vendors, cloud platforms, and software ecosystems a much larger role in telecom economics than they held in earlier network generations.

Sources: NVIDIA