Ronnie Vasishta

There’s a recurring theme when you meet the world’s most successful technology leaders: a seemingly endless passion for innovation and the ‘new’, and a need to understand the mechanics of extracting the most value from any given solution. Or, as Ronnie Vasishta modestly calls it when recounting his earliest years, ‘tinkering’. 

In this instance, that tinkering, which has its roots in a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and desire to know how transistors were made – a fundamental element of the semiconductor industry – has served Ronnie well. Over more than three decades he has worked in roles spanning semiconductor engineering, product planning, strategic marketing and executive leadership at LSI Logic, privately held eASIC Corporation, Intel and NVIDIA. 

“My passion for connecting the technology dots and technology interactions has driven an all-consuming interest in technology innovation across a broad spectrum of disciplines,” Ronnie says. “I’ve always wanted to challenge myself by moving domains. Throughout my career I’ve been involved in defining new technologies and connecting them to market opportunities – sometimes even before the market opportunities were apparent. They’re experiences that helped me get comfortable being uncomfortable.

“As CEO of eASIC, I scaled the company from pre-revenue to its successful acquisition by Intel. Our largest customers were telecoms equipment providers and I recognised that this was a market space that needed innovation,” he adds. “At Intel I led programmable solutions for telecoms, driving advancements such as the cloudification of the Radio Access Network (RAN).”

Ronnie joined NVIDIA in late 2020 in the role of Senior Vice President Telecom, where he is responsible for the telecom business, strategy and products. “I leverage these years of experience to drive innovation in AI and accelerated computing for telecoms,” he explains. “My focus is on transforming great ideas into scalable solutions that redefine industries, including technologies like 5G and 6G networks.”

Innovation in telecoms: using AI to solve complex challenges

Considering his passion for innovation, Ronnie couldn’t have chosen a better time to be at the forefront of the telecoms industry. Over the last couple of years the fusion of AI and telecommunications has transformed the sector, including improving network efficiency and performance, enhancing customer experience and service, and driving new business models and opportunities. 

NVIDIA has been at the heart of much of this growth, actively collaborating with the industry to integrate AI into companies’ networks and services. 

Ronnie has seen the pace of AI development grow rapidly over his career, particularly in telecoms, spotting its potential early-on while CEO at eASIC. “It was around 2015,” he recalls. “I thought we could build a programmable AI chip that would benefit some of our telecoms customers but, at that stage, the problem was too difficult to solve in a small company. 

“Even then it was clear to me that Deep Learning had tremendous potential, but I didn’t know yet which silicon platform could solve this performance and power trade-off. I also didn’t realise that NVIDIA was working on solving this exact challenge. When it announced its collaboration with Ericsson on software defined 5G in 2018, it became clear to me how AI could solve many of the technical and business model challenges in the telecoms industry.” 

How NVIDIA is at the forefront of the AI era

The speed of the AI uptake since has been significant, as demonstrated in Nvidia’s own third annual State of AI in Telecommunications survey, published at the start of 2025. This highlights how the telecoms industry is integrating AI across the board, from deploying external solutions like customer assistants and Gen AI solutions, through to network and infrastructure technology including integrating AI into the RAN.

According to NVIDIA’s research, 84% of telecoms professionals worldwide said AI is helping increase their company’s annual revenue, while 80% identified the technology as crucial for future success.

“It’s a great time to be in the telecoms industry, as the AI era will have a huge impact,” says Ronnie. “We are only about two years into the AI era and the early impacts are already visible. Seventeen telcos around the world have already engaged in building AI factories with NVIDIA, marking an unprecedented revenue opportunity for companies who are often seen as the trusted providers of critical infrastructure in a region. 

“Telcos are also starting to broadly adopt AI for customer experience enhancement and internal productivity gains,” he continues. “Additionally, now that we’ve shown that homogenous infrastructure can run AI and Radio Access Network (RAN) software stacks, we are starting to see the momentum of AI-RAN.” 

NVIDIA has been at the forefront of deploying AI-enabled Radio Access Networks – part of the cellular network that connects user devices like smartphones to the core network – for several years, collaborating with telcos and research leaders to develop an AI-native wireless network stack based on its AI Aerial platform.

The next generation of wireless network hardware, software and architecture to support 6G will need to be fundamentally integrated with AI in order to seamlessly connect the hundreds of billions of phones, sensors, cameras, robots and autonomous vehicles. This can only be delivered by the creation of networks that are software defined, programmable and run on intelligent hardware infrastructure. 

AI-RAN brings AI and RAN workloads together on one platform and embeds AI into radio signal processing. To deliver enhanced spectral efficiency and lower operational complexity and costs, AI will be fully embedded into the network stack’s software and hosted over a unified accelerated infrastructure, capable of running both network and AI workloads.

AI as an enabler of large-scale transformation

NVIDIA has had a busy start to 2025, discussing developments in this field at the Mobile World Congress and the company’s own GTC global AI conference for developers, engineers, researchers, inventors and IT leaders. Specifically at GTC, the company unveiled partnerships with industry leaders including T-Mobile, MITRE, Cisco, ODC and Booz Allen Hamilton on the R&D of AI-native wireless network hardware, software and architecture for 6G.

“About a year ago we were one of the founding companies within the AI-RAN Alliance,” Ronnie says. “In just one year that has grown from 10 founding members to 75 member companies across 17 countries. 

“The first step NVIDIA took was to accelerate Layer1 of the 5G software stack using accelerated compute platforms. Now we are seeing how AI and ML can benefit the spectral and power efficiency of the Radio Access Network,” he adds, discussing the company’s development efforts in this area.2

Around three years ago, the company released Sionna, a differentiable link layer simulator and open-source tool, which has since been downloaded 150,000 times. “There is a pent-up demand from wireless researchers to demonstrate how AI and ML can enhance or even replace conventional algorithms and techniques,” Ronnie highlights. “Now wireless networks can learn their environment, be trained, simulated and deployed in a matter of minutes rather than days.

“The shift from traditional proprietary, single use wireless systems to software-defined, AI-driven, multi-use systems extends benefits across business models, R&D and deployment. We see 6G as a software upgrade, building on these innovations.”

AI and telecoms driving broader change

Discussing NVIDIA’s AI-RAN collaboration announcement at GTC, Ronnie says the revolutionary approach will underpin the journey to effective 6G in the future: “The industry has recognised that AI is essential for delivering many of the applications touted for 6G, such as immersive or augmented experiences, autonomous vehicles, generative AI agents on mobile devices and instant language translation.

“This group of leading companies have set out with the mission to build networks with AI infused from the start, unencumbered by legacy, non-AI techniques. These networks will be self-adapting, power efficient and multi-use, and will be developed collaboratively to serve as deployable blueprints.”

Developments like these show the power of AI, and the ability it has to transform industries globally at scale. Looking ahead, Ronnie points to the technology’s potential for transforming lives on a global scale: “Democratising wireless research and enabling innovative researchers to directly influence the 6G standards is truly exciting. We know that a host of new AI applications are possible when AI is embedded into the wireless network. 

“This level of change and opportunity has never existed before in the telecoms and related industries. Working with the industry around the world and seeing the innovation possible with the full stack AI building blocks from NVIDIA, it is clear to me that the lives of literally billions of people can be positively impacted. Healthcare, education and agriculture can all benefit from the fusion of AI and telecommunications.”

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