The ORAN Development Company (ODC) has raised $45 million during the company's latest Series A funding round.

US-based ODC, which focuses on developing AI-native RAN (AI RAN) networks, paired with several tech giants to raise the funds, including Nvidia, Nokia, and AT&T.

Other heavyweights included Booz Allen, Cisco Investments, MTN Group, and Telecom Italia.

According to ODC, the latest round sees these companies join Phoenix Venture Partners and a prior seed investment made by affiliates of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P.

AI-RAN has been a key focus for telcos and vendors in recent weeks, and was a key theme at this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC) event, with Nokia and Nvidia notably outlining plans to drive developments in this field.

ODC said the funding "accelerates the deployment of an AI-native, open-architecture platform – and the definitive US-based RAN stack – that structurally unifies communication, sensing, and Edge intelligence."

The group hints that it expects to add further commercial partners throughout this year.

ODC said it's building the “Distributed Compute Grid," which it describes as the essential token factory for the world’s digital and physical infrastructure.

This infrastructure, ODC states, "serves as the essential fabric for the AI-Native era, transforming today’s cell sites into high-performance compute hubs capable of orchestrating everything from Agentic AI and real-time generative inference to the Physical AI applications that define national infrastructure resilience."

“The industry is moving toward software-defined, AI-native Telecom networks, which will be essential for the Physical AI era,” said Ronnie Vasishta, SVP of telecom at Nvidia. “ODC’s AI-RAN stack is a key enabler of this shift, turning today’s 5G networks into a distributed AI computing fabric at the wireless Edge. By leveraging the Nvidia Aerial platform to unify high-performance 5G with sensing, ODC is helping to raise the innovation bar for AI-RAN and creating a strong on-ramp to 6G."

“The successful completion of our Series A round will allow us to scale our engagement with global partners who recognize that the wireless Edge is the next frontier for AI. This is more than a technical deployment," added Dr. Shaygan Kheradpir, chairman of ODC.

"Our platform is designed to enable transformation of the network from a communication pipe into a Distributed Compute Grid – a global network of Token Factories capable of everything from general AI inference to the real-time spatial sensing required for autonomous systems."