Nokia analyzes 50M+ lines of code in two weeks with Cursor
Two engineers analyzed more than 50 million lines of code in two weeks, work that would have taken a dozen or more experts several months with custom tooling.
Nokia is redesigning its entire software development lifecycle with Cursor – from PRD and design work to code analysis, building customer internal tools, and accelerating diagnosis on customer-impacting defects from historical service requests. In one project, two engineers analyzed more than 50 million lines of code in two weeks – work that would have taken a dozen or more experts several months with custom tooling.
Nokia delivers AI-powered connectivity for cloud providers, mission-critical enterprises, and telecommunications providers. Its Core Networks division develops a comprehensive portfolio of cloud native network functions that power 5G mobile voice and data services. The division operates in a highly regulated, standards-driven environment where many use cases demand five-nines reliability.
Nokia Core Networks needed to develop an evidence-based plan to decompose its monolithic architecture and establish a more distributed, service-based architecture. The assigned team previously expected the job would require custom tooling, take several months, and occupy a dozen or more experts. Using Cursor, two engineers analyzed more than 50 million lines of code in one of the Core Networks product lines in two weeks.
Our early success is leveraging Cursor as a platform for multi-agent deployment and orchestration, where the role of the engineer becomes the supervision of agents that are performing work at scale and collaborating with one another. Applying Cursor is a huge productivity benefit, and we're at the beginning of a very critical journey.
Analyzing more than 50 million lines of code in two weeks
The Core Network division's hybrid codebase included code written in C, C++, Go, and other languages distributed across numerous repositories. Using Cursor, two Nokia team members analyzed the codebase in two weeks without requiring custom tools. The analysis provided Nokia with an evidence-based plan for decomposing the architecture based on insights into where changes could have the greatest impact on reliability and customer outcomes. By completing the analysis with only two engineers, the Core Network team estimates it freed up more than a dozen specialists over several months, allowing them to focus on other projects.
"It gave us a very analytical, insightful view into our known historical challenges that we've had in the codebase. We know that if we go with this plan, it will actually have ROI, which probably would not have been possible without Cursor," said Kal De, SVP of Product and Engineering, Core Networks, Mobile Infrastructure Group at Nokia.
From multi-month manual workflow to building an automated tool in one week
Nokia also uses Cursor to simplify how it deploys new functionality across its network. In the past, deploying a new 5G mobile core function required a multi-month project and dozens of people across multiple parts of the company.
To reduce complexity, a Nokia engineer used Cursor to go from problem statement to a detailed PRD to a working project-management tool, all in Cursor, in less than a week. The tool automated and visualized approximately 80% of a workflow that ordinarily would have required coordination between 6–10 project managers and program managers.
"He identified a problem and then used Cursor to build a full-blown solution. He knocked us off our seats. That certainly had an accelerating effect on our feeling that we are at the point now that we should scale our use of Cursor," said De.
Conducting root cause analysis in days instead of weeks
Nokia is also using Cursor when a software defect affects a customer or the customer's subscribers. In the past, investigating those issues was a semi-manual process: engineers dug through a complicated codebase with limited information about what triggered the problem, which often required weeks of work and multiple meetings across teams.
With Cursor, systems engineers load environment logs, past tickets, the codebase, and debugging traces. Multiple agents run in parallel to flag potential hotspots and propose actionable triage steps, so engineers can act without waiting on cross-team coordination. What used to take weeks now takes days.
We can radically accelerate our root cause analysis, which directly impacts our ability to put a patch in place that resolves a problem an order of magnitude faster.
Redesigning the SDLC around specialized agents
Nokia has also extended its use of Cursor into the earliest stages of its software development lifecycle, where workflows historically have involved less automation. Teams are using Cursor to support requirements gathering and to generate product requirements documents, accelerating creation of high-level designs and detailed architectural plans. Engineers can select among multiple models based on the accuracy and token efficiency each task requires.
Looking ahead, the company plans to use Cursor to help discover requirements within the complex telecommunications networks it supports. By using Cursor to automatically catalogue network elements and define how they are configured, connected, and governed by policy, Nokia will be able to give its teams the context they need to reduce manual work and move new capabilities into development more efficiently.
"We are redesigning our entire software development lifecycle from inception to product delivery and everything in between. We are trying to leverage Cursor as an agent platform to introduce specialized agents that are persona specific for every aspect of work that we do, and that can partner with the human in the seat who does that work today," said De.
If you're interested in transforming your SDLC with Cursor, please reach out to our team to start a free trial.