Nokia expanded its role in open networking by joining the SONiC Foundation as a Premier member, strengthening the open-source network operating system’s (NOS) position in AI-scale and cloud data center deployments. The move adds Nokia to a roster of major hyperscale and semiconductor contributors backing SONiC as it gains traction in large-scale, vendor-agnostic fabrics. Mirza Arifovic, Nokia R&D Lead, will take a seat on the SONiC Governing Board.
Nokia has contributed to SONiC since 2019, including work on chassis and multi-ASIC architectures, Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) enhancements, ARM enablement, and footprint optimization—capabilities increasingly important as operators build power-efficient fabrics for AI clusters. As a Premier member, Nokia plans to increase its participation across SONiC working groups to push forward high-capacity, programmable, and automated leaf-spine and AI-optimized architectures.
The SONiC Foundation noted that Nokia’s expanded involvement supports the platform’s momentum across hyperscale, enterprise, and telecom environments, where open, cloud-native NOS stacks are aligning with new AI workload demands. SONiC’s Premier membership now spans a broad ecosystem including Alibaba, Arista Networks, Broadcom, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Google, Intel, Marvell, Microsoft, Nexthop AI, and Nvidia.
• Nokia joins SONiC Foundation as a Premier member
• Mirza Arifovic takes a seat on the SONiC Governing Board
• Nokia contributions include chassis/multi-ASIC, SAI, ARM, and small-footprint optimizations
• Expanded role targets AI-optimized and cloud-scale data center fabrics
• Existing Premier members include major hyperscalers, switch vendors, and chipmakers
“We are delighted to welcome Nokia as a Premier member of the SONiC Foundation,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT at the Linux Foundation.
🌐 Analysis: Nokia’s move aligns with rising industry adoption of SONiC—from hyperscale cloud to emerging AI-factory architectures—where operators increasingly request open, modular NOS stacks tuned for high-capacity fabrics. This also dovetails with Nokia’s broader IP networking strategy, including recent investments in AI-ready silicon and automation platforms, competing with similar open-networking momentum from Arista, Broadcom, Cisco, and Microsoft in the SONiC community.
