Nokia Stock Just Did Something Nobody Saw Coming — And It’s Not About Phones

For the better part of ten years, Nokia appeared to occupy a permanent place on a certain shelf in the history of technology where companies go to be quietly forgotten. Mostly through licensing agreements and the occasional nostalgic mid-range phone that no one under thirty actually purchased, the brand managed to survive. For years, the stock fluctuated in the low single digits. Then it began to climb almost without warning. As of early May 2026, Nokia’s stock had increased by about 168% over the previous 12 months and 104% year to date. Today’s closing price of €11.40 for the Helsinki listing was close to a 52-week high. Depositary receipts in the United States trade slightly over $13. The current price is more than four dollars below the 50-day moving average. Clearly, something has changed.

Upon closer inspection, the change is no longer primarily related to telecommunications. Or at least not the kind that most people think of when they think of Nokia. Total revenue increased 4% year over year, according to the company’s first-quarter results, which were released in late March. This is good but not particularly noteworthy. The line item hidden beneath caught everyone’s attention: revenue from cloud and AI customers increased by 49%. The division of Optical Networks saw a 20% increase. Executives cited hyperscalers and large enterprise data center operators as the source of demand for the approximately €1 billion in AI-related contract bookings that management disclosed. As this develops, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that Nokia has subtly transformed into an AI infrastructure business while the majority of observers were still debating the brand’s viability.

Wall Street didn’t realize this until much later. Only on April 30 did Arete Research upgrade the stock from neutral to buy, despite the fact that shares had already increased significantly year over year. On April 24, Nordea changed its rating to buy. In March, Goldman Sachs changed Nokia’s status from sell to neutral. The stock is currently trading far below the consensus price target, which is $9.71, according to MarketBeat. That difference typically indicates one of two things: either the stock has run too high or analysts are about to raise their projections. There’s a sense that both might be partially accurate.

Jim Cramer’s fingerprints can be seen on parts of the recent rally. He referred to Nokia as “a winner” during a Friday broadcast, providing the kind of cable-news endorsement that retail traders use as a springboard. That day, the volume more than doubled to about 137 million shares. Additionally, Nokia is selling its Fixed Wireless Access CPE unit to Inseego for about $20 million in exchange for an equity stake in the buyer, according to a deal that was announced last week. There isn’t much money. The plan isn’t. Nokia leaves a low-margin hardware market, maintains flexibility in 6G and edge computing, and allows its engineers to focus on what really sells: the AI-grade infrastructure and optical networks that hyperscalers are purchasing.

There’s also a more subdued tale here, the kind that is mentioned briefly and then forgotten. As part of the larger AI buildout, Nvidia reportedly committed about $1 billion to Nokia, placing a wager on the older company’s network infrastructure capabilities. Conversations about quantum-safe networking and next-generation data center connectivity suddenly bring up Bell Labs, which Nokia acquired from Alcatel-Lucent in 2016. Even a quantum-safe demo kit was recently introduced by the company, primarily for positioning purposes, but the results were not what they would have been two years ago.

The valuation is the hesitation worth pointing out. There is no room for error when the trailing P/E is around 80. The stock may quickly lose a significant portion of its gains if hyperscalers’ AI capital expenditures slow even slightly or if a quarter is disappointing. The consensus for forward earnings is close to $0.41 per share. The ability of Nokia to continue turning demand for AI infrastructure into real revenue rather than just contract bookings will determine whether the company’s stock continues to rise. The chart is speaking for the time being. After being written off for fifteen years, Nokia has suddenly become a contentious stock. That’s a sort of comeback on its own.