Nokia Powers Sovereign APAC AI Infrastructure through Zankore Alliance

Nokia is expanding its footprint in sovereign and enterprise computing through a high-profile collaboration with Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, Ooredoo Group, and NVIDIA on the launch of Zankore by Indosat. Designed to build the next generation of AI infrastructure for the global market from an Asia-Pacific launchpad, this initiative directly addresses the region’s accelerating demand for secure, scalable AI compute while establishing Indonesia as a primary regional technology hub. By integrating its advanced network and connectivity architectures into this multi-party ecosystem, Nokia helps establish the foundational infrastructure necessary to support massive computational scaling.

From our perspective, the consortium's ambitious deployment target of 1 gigawatt of NVIDIA DSX AI Factory capacity positions Zankore by Indosat as one of the largest AI infrastructure platforms in the Asia-Pacific region. This colossal scale transitions the regional market from foundational model experimentation to full-scale enterprise and agentic AI adoption. For Nokia, participating in such a high-density compute deployment reinforces its critical role at the intersection of ultra-low-latency optical networking, telecom infrastructure, and massive AI factory connectivity, ensuring that regional network fabrics can reliably handle the high-throughput, non-deterministic traffic generated by next-generation agentic workloads.

The strategic focus of the Zankore by Indosat initiative directly targets the primary barrier facing modern infrastructure scaling: security and regulatory compliance. HyperFRAME Research Lens State of the Enterprise I&O 1H 2026 study confirms that 72% of enterprise I&O leaders view security as a critical constraint, with 31% identifying it as their most daunting operational hurdle. By anchoring the platform's 1-gigawatt NVIDIA DSX expansion on secure, sovereign AI compute, the alliance addresses these systemic risks head-on. We see this approach enabling regional organizations to safely move past isolated large language model trials into full-scale, agentic AI deployments without compromising on governance or data residency standards.

In this architecture, Nokia’s AI-native optical and telecom networking serves as the fundamental control plane that resolves these scaling friction points. High-density AI factories generate non-deterministic, bursty, and bandwidth-intensive traffic patterns that can degrade legacy networks, creating performance degradation and security vulnerabilities. By delivering an ultra-low-latency networking stack, Nokia ensures that high-throughput agentic workloads scale predictably and securely. Overall, this robust interconnectivity enables enterprise environments to bypass traditional compliance and performance bottlenecks, unlocking resilient compute capacity across the broader Asia-Pacific ecosystem.

Zankore by Indosat Unifies NVIDIA, Nokia, and Ooredoo to Build Southeast Asia’s Premier AI Factory

By building one of Southeast Asia’s largest AI factory platforms, Zankore by Indosat leverages the NVIDIA DSX reference architecture to converge accelerated computing, high-density networking, power management, and advanced cooling into a single unified operational system. Designed to maximize compute yield per megawatt, the platform is slated to deliver approximately 200 megawatts of AI capacity by the first half of 2027 using NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 architectures. A key operational driver of this deployment is the integration of NVIDIA DSX MaxLPS technology, which dynamically redistributes power across the GPU fleet to reclaim stranded energy. By unlocking up to 40% more compute density within existing power envelopes, the platform significantly improves operational efficiency, capital productivity, and revenue generation capacity for large-scale enterprise workloads.

The multi-party consortium relies on clear operational division of labor, drawing on the specialized capabilities of each partner to execute across the Asia-Pacific region. Ooredoo Group serves as the primary capital investor and platform sponsor to provide financial backing and regional scale, while Indosat delivers localized digital infrastructure, regulatory navigation, and execution capabilities within Indonesia. Crucially, NVIDIA supplies the underlying accelerated hardware, software stack, and ecosystem framework, while Nokia provides AI-native networking to ensure low-latency, high-throughput interconnectivity across the dense compute fabric. By unifying capital, accelerated silicon, local operational footprint, and high-performance networking, the alliance establishes a vertically integrated framework capable of driving enterprise AI adoption across the region.

Nokia Gains Competitive Edge in AI Networking via Multi-Party Zankore Alliance

Nokia faces a wide array of competition in AI data center networking and telecommunications infrastructure from Arista, Cisco, Ciena, Huawei, and Ericsson. While such peers traditionally rely on securing standard enterprise data center switches or standalone optical pipelines, Nokia achieves a distinct competitive advantage through its strategic ecosystem integration in the Zankore by Indosat initiative. By co-architecting a massive 1-gigawatt AI factory platform directly alongside NVIDIA, Nokia embeds its SR Linux data center operating system and high-capacity optical transport into the validated NVIDIA DSX reference architecture.

From our perspective, securing Ooredoo Group’s long-term capital sponsorship and Indosat’s localized regional footprint provides Nokia with an immediate, captive launchpad for ultra-high-density compute across Asia-Pacific. Consequently, while competitors are hard-pressed to directly counter the integrated Nokia NVIDIA proposition, resulting in more fragmented sales and marketing processes, Nokia delivers a pre-integrated, vertically unified AI-native networking control plane that solves critical low-latency and high-throughput bottlenecks for non-deterministic agentic workloads at enterprise scale.

Zankore Establishes Leadership Board and Strategic Vision for Regional AI Sovereignty

The formal governance structure established for Zankore by Indosat aligns key equity holders and independent executives to guide the platform’s rapid operational expansion. By combining board representation from Ooredoo Group (Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, Thomas Chevanne) and Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (Vikram Sinha, Vishal Gupta) alongside independent director Arijit Ranjan Sarker and CEO Ulf Ewaldsson, the organization establishes a clear framework for strategic oversight. Under the leadership of Ewaldsson, a seasoned telecom and technology executive, this corporate governance model balances capital allocation discipline with localized execution, ensuring the enterprise can scale its high-density AI infrastructure predictably across Southeast Asian markets.

From a macro perspective, the platform serves as a critical enabler of regional technology sovereignty and digital economic growth. By delivering a vertically integrated AI stack tailored for hyperscalers, multinational enterprises, public sector bodies, and AI startups, Zankore by Indosat lowers the barrier to adopting advanced compute capabilities across Asia-Pacific. Ultimately, this foundational infrastructure allows regional organizations to transition from passive consumers of global AI services to active innovators, driving sustainable economic expansion and operational competitiveness in an increasingly AI-driven global economy.