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Nokia and Blaize address AI inference gap in APAC
30. 04. 2026 Thursday / By: Robert Denes / Industrial / Exact time: BST / Print this page
N okia and Blaize are developing a hybrid AI architecture to address inference deployment challenges in the APAC region. Nokia and Blaize, an AI chip design company, are moving beyond an early-stage collaboration to address what they see as a major bottleneck in the growing AI ecosystem: scalable yet cost-effective inference.
Following their initial Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) earlier this year, the two companies are now developing a joint reference architecture that simplifies hybrid AI deployments across edge, cloud and data center environments in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.
The partnership aims to address three challenges that enterprises and service providers are currently facing, including ensuring end-to-end performance, deployment complexity and reducing the cost of AI infrastructure. The two companies are using the Nokia Innovation Lab in Singapore to develop, test, validate and deploy AI solutions for customers.
"Customers are struggling with the convergence of AI silicon, software frameworks, networking, security and lifecycle management. This joint partnership allows us to deliver a pre-integrated, validated stack with AI, hardware, compute, hardware inference, networking and automation, so we can work together,” said Dion Leung, head of Nokia AI and Cloud – APAC.
"AI workloads at the edge often cannot be justified by GPU economics or power alone. Together, we can deliver a power-efficient AI platform that enables workloads to be optimally placed at the far or near edge, reducing both CAPEX and OPEX,” Leung added.
"The move comes at a time when demand is shifting from model training to inference as organizations look to monetize their AI investments. “What we’re seeing now is a clear shift in demand from training to inference, with cloud providers moving from 15% to 50% of their workloads to inference, as customers move from experimentation to real-world deployments. Organizations are asking how they can actually deploy applications and create value from their AI investments,” said Joseph Sulistyo, senior vice president of global marketing at Blaize.
This is leading to a focus on outcomes-driven solutions that can quickly move from pilot to production, Sulistyo said, and it’s this gap that the Nokia-Blaize partnership aims to address.
While advanced APAC economies such as Singapore, Japan and Australia are moving towards cloud-based and edge-based architectures, fast-growing markets such as India, Indonesia and Vietnam are still experimenting with AI deployment models and monetization strategies. Nokia and Blaize believe that in the next two to three years, the market will move from experimentation to developing domain-specific, outcome-oriented solutions.
Nokia’s partnership with Blaize in APAC complements its agreement with chip giant Nvidia last year. Nvidia bought a 2.9% stake in Nokia in October 2025 for $1 billion to accelerate the development of AI-RAN (Radio Access Network).
Nokia and Blaize face strong competition from several players in the region, including Nvidia and Qualcomm on the computing side, and Ericsson, which is working with Huawei and Intel.
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