- Cumulative AI-RAN revenue is projected to reach $35 billion over the next five years
- AI-RAN is not expected to expand the overall RAN market
- GPU RAN is expected to be a $1 billion-plus market by the end 2030
Research firm Dell'Oro Group says that cumulative AI-RAN revenue is projected to reach $35 billion over the next five years. However, this boom will not expand the overall RAN market, Dell'Oro Group VP Stefan Pongratz noted.
Pongratz said the wheels are already in motion on AI-RAN, positioning it to scale ahead of 6G. But that scale won't translate to a larger RAN market overall.
"While we continue to believe that all roads lead to more AI-RAN, we remain highly skeptical that AI-for-RAN will differ materially from other technological or architectural advancements," he told Fierce. "These AI tools will enhance the RAN, but they are unlikely to change the carrier revenue trajectory and expand the overall RAN market. Even as suppliers introduce new software-based subscription models, we expect AI-RAN to generate little, if any, incremental RAN revenue by 2030."
Pongratz continued, "This does not imply that AI-RAN is not a promising technology. On the contrary, we believe AI-RAN will play an increasingly important role during the second half of the 5G cycle and will be incorporated into 6G from the outset, resulting in a fairly steep ramp compared to other technology shifts."
For this latest report, Pongratz looked at how AI is being integrated into existing and emerging RAN architectures, and how it's influencing product strategies, deployment models and competitive dynamics across the RAN ecosystem. This approach is important because AI is expanding the role of the RAN from a connectivity layer optimized for performance and efficiency to a more adaptive platform capable of supporting differentiated services.
As Pongratz said above, this latest forecast assumes that AI-RAN will not expand the RAN market. Nevertheless, AI-RAN is expected to become an important technology enabler as operators incorporate greater virtualization, intelligence, automation and O-RAN capabilities into their RAN roadmaps.
GPU RAN projections revised upward
Additionally, GPU RAN is now expected to be a $1 billion-plus market by the end of the forecast period, according to Pongratz. This despite doubts from operators and analysts that GPUs are necessary in the RAN.
In the near term, the AI-RAN market will remain centered on AI-for-RAN, single-purpose deployments, non-GPU architectures, D-RAN and 5G, he noted.
Pongratz added that incumbent RAN radio and baseband suppliers are well-positioned in the initial AI-RAN phase, driven primarily by AI-for-RAN upgrades leveraging existing hardware.
Per Dell’Oro Group’s regular RAN coverage, the top five RAN suppliers contributed approximately 96% of 2025 RAN revenue. Those vendors are: Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and Samsung.
Read all of Fierce Network's coverage of AI-RAN here.
This story was updated on June 30, 2026, at 4:12 p.m. ET to add captions provided by Pongratz to the charts.