Nokia, the 161-year-old company, has become the hottest AI infrastructure stock, with shares skyrocketing 140% year-to-date.
The share of the Finnish company that was started as a paper mill climbed from 6.50 at the start of the year to a 52-week high of 15.78 in May.
This marks the highest stock levels since 2008.
The reason behind the rally is Nvidia’s investment back in October 2025 at 6.01 per share, taking around a 3% stake.
This collaboration is centred around AI-RAN, which is an AI workload combined with wireless network infrastructure. The first deployment partner for the project is T-Mobile, while the AI-RAN offering of Nokia has 10 public customers, which include Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, SoftBank, and NTT Docomo.
The rally accelerated after Nokia’s fiscal first-quarter earnings report. The company reported revenue of around 4.5 billion euros, up 4% year-over-year, while comparable operating profit jumped 54% to 281 million euros.
AI and cloud sales jumped by 49%, and Nokia secured 1 billion euros worth of cloud deals in the quarter, with most being related to optical networking products utilized in AI data centers.
Q1 revenue in Optical Networks increased by 20%. The chief executive officer, Justin Hotard, stated that the cloud leaders will be spending more than $700 billion for their AI infrastructure needs.
For now, the infrastructure growth of Nokia is expected to rise at 12% to 14%, while Optical and IP networks are projected to grow 18% to 20%.
2026-05-27 01:32:00
