Nokia Oyj shares staged a sharp rally in late Helsinki trading on Friday, surging 8.2% to €13.09 and far outpacing the OMX Helsinki 25 index, which gained just 0.9%. The move extended a broader re-rating of the stock that began in April, when the Finnish network equipment maker reported a sharp jump in sales to artificial intelligence and cloud customers.
The immediate catalyst was the launch of Nokia's AI Networking Innovation Lab in Sunnyvale, California, on Thursday. The lab is designed to test data-center networks for AI training and inference workloads, and Nokia announced partnerships with AMD, Keysight, Lenovo, Nscale, Supermicro, Weka, and Everpure. AMD's Travis Karr hailed the lab's “open, standards-driven approach,” while Nokia's Rudy Hoebeke called it a “major milestone.”
Investors have been reassessing Nokia's valuation since the company's first-quarter earnings report in April. Comparable operating profit rose 54% to €281 million, beating analyst expectations of €250 million. More importantly, sales to AI and cloud customers surged 49%, and Nokia booked €1 billion in orders from those clients. CEO Justin Hotard said the company was “tracking somewhat above” the midpoint of its 2026 comparable operating profit outlook of €2.0 billion to €2.5 billion.
That earnings reset drove Nokia shares to their highest level since 2010 in April, and Friday's rally brought the stock back near that zone. The company is no longer viewed solely as a 5G telecom gear supplier; investors are increasingly weighing whether its optical networks — systems that move large amounts of data over fiber — can benefit from the massive build-out of AI data centers.
The demand story is not abstract. Hotard told Reuters last month that Europe “doesn't have the infrastructure” needed for AI data centers, adding, “You need connectivity. You need data center capacity.” Hyperscale cloud providers are spending heavily on that capacity, and Nokia is positioning itself to capture a larger share of the pipes and switching equipment behind it.
There is a peer angle, too. Ericsson, Nokia's closest Nordic telecom-equipment rival, reported first-quarter results that highlighted a different pressure point: AI-related chip costs rose and North American sales slowed, causing Ericsson's core profit to miss expectations.
In New York, Nokia's American depositary receipts (ADRs) were also higher, trading at $15.08, up 6.31%, after ending a five-day losing streak on Thursday with a 4.11% gain.
But the rally leaves little room for error. Nokia itself lists competitive intensity, shifts in customer network investment, component costs such as semiconductors, supply-chain disruption, currency swings, tariffs, interest rates, and geopolitical conflicts among risks that could alter the outlook.
The next hard test is delivery. Nokia has told investors it expects second-quarter net sales to rise 5% to 9% from the first quarter and second-quarter operating profit to account for 12% to 16% of full-year operating profit. The company plans to report second-quarter and first-half results on July 23.
