Helsinki, May 22, 2026, 17:04 EEST
- Nokia’s Helsinki shares were up 8.2% at 13.09 euros late Friday, beating the OMX Helsinki 25 index’s 0.9% gain.
- The move followed Nokia’s launch of a Sunnyvale AI networking lab with partners including AMD, Keysight, Lenovo and Supermicro.
- The stock’s broader driver remains the April earnings reset, when Nokia said AI and cloud customer sales rose 49%.
Nokia Oyj shares jumped late in Helsinki trade on Friday, outpacing the broader Finnish blue-chip index as investors kept buying into the network equipment maker’s shift toward artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The stock traded at 13.09 euros, up 8.18%, at 17:00 local time, while the OMX Helsinki 25 was up 0.92% at 6,466.55. Trading was still within Nasdaq Helsinki’s regular equity session, which runs from 10:00 to 18:30 local time.
The timing matters. Nokia on Thursday launched an AI Networking Innovation Lab in Sunnyvale, California, aimed at testing data-centre networks for AI training and inference — the running of AI models after they have been built. The company named AMD, Keysight, Lenovo, Nscale, Supermicro, Weka and Everpure among early partners; Nokia executive Rudy Hoebeke called the launch a “major milestone,” while AMD’s Travis Karr pointed to an “open, standards-driven approach.” GlobeNewswire
That gave the market another reason to revisit a theme already in place since April: Nokia is no longer being valued only as a 5G telecom gear supplier. Investors are also weighing whether its optical networks — systems that move large amounts of data over fibre — can benefit from the build-out of AI data centres.
Nokia’s first-quarter numbers set that trade in motion. Comparable operating profit, an adjusted profit measure, rose 54% to 281 million euros, beating the 250 million euros expected by analysts polled by Infront, while AI and cloud customer sales rose 49% and the company booked 1 billion euros of orders from those customers.
Chief Executive Justin Hotard said at the time that Nokia was “tracking somewhat above” the mid-point of its 2026 comparable operating profit outlook of 2.0 billion to 2.5 billion euros. That was enough to push the shares to their highest level since 2010 in April, and Friday’s move put the stock back near that zone.
The demand story is not abstract. In a Reuters interview last month, Hotard said Europe “doesn’t have the infrastructure” needed for AI data centres and added: “You need connectivity. You need data centre capacity.” Hyperscalers — large cloud providers — are spending heavily on that capacity, and Nokia wants a larger share of the pipes and switching gear behind it. Reuters
There is a peer angle, too. Ericsson remains Nokia’s closest Nordic telecom-equipment comparator, but its recent first-quarter update highlighted a different pressure point: Reuters reported in April that Ericsson’s core profit missed expectations as AI-related chip costs rose and North American sales slowed.
In New York, Nokia’s ADRs — American depositary receipts, U.S.-traded certificates representing foreign shares — were also higher, trading at $15.08, up 6.31%, at 9:41 a.m. EDT. The ADRs had risen 4.11% on Thursday, ending a five-day losing streak.
But the rally leaves little room for a stumble. Nokia itself lists competitive intensity, shifts in customer network investment, component costs such as semiconductors, supply-chain disruption, currency swings, tariffs, rates and geopolitical conflicts among risks that could change the outlook.
The next hard test is delivery. Nokia has told investors it assumes second-quarter net sales will rise 5% to 9% from the first quarter and that second-quarter operating profit will make up 12% to 16% of full-year operating profit; the company plans to report second-quarter and first-half results on July 23.
