Nokia announced equity firm Aurelius will acquire its Enterprise Campus Edge (ECE) business.

The planned transaction, expected to close in the first half of 2027, sees Nokia finally shedding ECE following its major restructure last year. That full AI and data center pivot would see the Finnish giant offload its Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) CPE business to broadband vendor Inseego in April, with ECE the one shoe left to drop.

Nokia touted ECE as an industry leader in private wireless, with almost 900 customers across industries including manufacturing, logistics, airports, and power generation worldwide. ECE will inherit a portfolio including industrial devices, on-premises operational technology (OT) edge, and micro-edge solutions, along with software applications powering industrial AI-powered use cases.

The firm also touted ECE’s digitalization platform as helping to connect assets and process OT data on premises for greater data security and sovereignty.

“ECE is a strong business with differentiated technology, a talented team, a global footprint and an established customer base that includes many Fortune 500 enterprises across various industries. We see significant opportunities for ECE to build on its leading position in private 5G and industrial edge as a standalone business, expand its portfolio into emerging areas such as AI-powered industrial automation, and help customers accelerate the digitalization and automation of their operations,” said Fabian Steger, managing director for Aurelius.

“This planned transaction supports Nokia’s strategy to sharpen its portfolio and direct capital and resources to the areas where it can create the greatest long-term value. It also provides ECE with a strong foundation for its next growth phase as a standalone business. Our priority throughout the transition will be continued growth of the business and continuity for existing customers and employees,” added Konstanty Owczarek, chief corporate development officer at Nokia

A brief overview of the Aurelius portfolio found no similar companies to Nokia ECE, although the London-based firm does own IT service businesses G&N Group and Exertis.

Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.