That Nokia you mocked has increased its stock price by 70% this year.

Writing: Little Biscuit, Deep Tide TechFlow

In 2014, Microsoft spent 7.2 billion USD to acquire Nokia’s mobile phone business.

That year, everyone thought the story of this Finnish company, dating back to 1865, was over. The Nokia 3310, which could crack walnuts, throw against walls without breaking, and play Snake, along with the entire company behind it, was sealed into the album of “Tears of the Era.”

Eleven years later, Jensen Huang called and said they would give them 1 billion USD.

Nokia’s stock has risen about 73% since early January this year, compared to a 130% increase at the same time last year.

This is not a “dead cat bounce” of an old stock; it’s an underestimated dark line in the entire AI narrative from 2025 to 2026.

Moreover, almost no Chinese investors are seriously discussing it.

Who is Justin Hotard?

The story begins with a name.

In February 2025, Nokia’s board announced: current CEO Pekka Lundmark would step down, and on April 1, a man named Justin Hotard from the US would take over.

This is Nokia’s first CEO born in the United States since its founding in 1865.

Hotard is a typical “little-known but always at the forefront” person in the tech circle. Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, MBA from MIT Sloan. He worked for 8.5 years at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), ultimately leading the High-Performance Computing and AI Labs, personally delivering the US Department of Energy’s first exascale supercomputer. Then, in early 2024, he was poached by Intel to oversee Data Center and AI divisions, reporting directly to Pat Gelsinger.

Pay attention to his background. HPC, data centers, AI—these three keywords have nothing to do with Nokia’s image over the past decade.

What does Nokia do? Build base stations, telecom equipment, fiber optics, sell to operators. A typical, slow-moving, market-forgotten “old European” hardware company.

But in early 2025, Nokia’s board made a seemingly illogical decision: they didn’t want someone who understood telecom; they wanted someone who understood AI.

In the appointment announcement, Chairman Sari Baldauf said: “The AI and data center markets are key areas for Nokia’s future growth.”

At that moment, almost no one took it seriously. The market reacted calmly, with a slight rise in stock price. All analysts were writing safe analyses like “Finnish old factory changes leadership, can the newcomer reverse the decline?”

No one realized that this company was quietly changing its engine.

An undervalued acquisition

If you only look at Hotard’s appointment, it’s just a normal executive change. But if you combine it with another event from half a year earlier, the script completely changes.

In June 2024, Nokia announced the acquisition of an American company—Infinera—for 2.3 billion USD.

What kind of company is Infinera? It does something called Optical Networking—simply put, fiber optic communication equipment between data centers and within data centers, between racks and racks.

If you’ve talked with someone working on AI infrastructure, you’ll know a fact:

The biggest bottleneck for AI data centers isn’t GPUs; it’s optical communication.

Nvidia packs 72 GPUs in a cabinet, and these GPUs need to exchange data frantically. A data center with tens of thousands of GPUs also needs to exchange data. Data synchronization between data centers is also necessary. The more clusters, the exponentially greater the demand for optical modules.

That’s why, over the past two years, optical module companies like Coherent in the US, China’s Zhongji Xuchuang, and New Easy-Sense have seen their stock prices soar.

Infinera is one of the few companies that master both photonic integrated circuits (PIC) and data center interconnect core technologies. It already has established client relationships with North American hyperscale cloud providers (Microsoft, Amazon, Google).

When Nokia signed this deal in June 2024, the market’s interpretation was: “A traditional telecom company has acquired a traditional fiber optic company—typical ‘two big elephants cuddling’ narrative.”

But after the deal closed in February 2025, and Infinera was consolidated into Nokia, the Finnish old factory’s financial figures began to change:

In 2025, full-year optical network revenue increased by 17% year-over-year.

In Q1 2026, optical network sales reached €821 million, up 20% year-over-year, surpassing IP and core software to become Nokia’s second-largest business.

Sales contributed by AI and cloud customers skyrocketed 49% quarter-over-quarter.

Most importantly, in Q1 2026, AI and cloud customers placed orders worth €1 billion with Nokia.

What does this number mean? It’s more than the entire sales of Infinera before the acquisition in a single quarter.

And all this, outside Western tech media, almost no one is talking about.

Jensen Huang’s call

What really set the market on fire was on October 28, 2025.

On that day, Nvidia announced at the GTC conference in Washington: it would invest 1 billion USD in Nokia at a price of $6.01 per share.

Pay attention to this detail: “$6.01 per share”—this is a subscription price, not the market price. Nvidia isn’t buying on the secondary market; Nokia issued new shares specifically for this. Nvidia’s investment is strategic, not just financial.

Why did Jensen Huang invest 1 billion USD in Nokia?

Nvidia’s official statement is: the two will jointly develop AI-RAN (AI-enabled Radio Access Network). Nokia’s 5G and 6G software will be ported to Nvidia’s CUDA platform; Nvidia’s Arc-Pro accelerators, developed specifically for telecom, will be embedded into Nokia’s base stations.

T-Mobile US became the first pilot operator. Dell will provide servers.

It sounds like a common “AI empowering XX industry” story. But the real Easter egg is hidden in a technical detail that 99% of people won’t notice.

First, you need to understand a background: in the AI-RAN track, Nokia isn’t the only player. Its biggest competitor is Ericsson, also from Scandinavia.

Ericsson and Nokia seem to do the same thing: provide 5G/6G base station equipment for operators. But in “how to fit GPUs into base stations,” they’ve taken two completely opposite paths.

These paths are jokingly called “religious wars” by engineers.

The first path is called Lookaside (offload acceleration). This is the route Ericsson and Intel are taking. Simply put: the base station’s CPU remains the main controller, and GPU is just an “assistant” on the side. When needing acceleration, the CPU “throws” tasks to the GPU, which processes and “returns” results. Data bounces back and forth between CPU and GPU.

The second path is Inline (online acceleration). This is the route Nokia and Nvidia are taking. Simply put: network data received by the base station first hits the GPU, which processes it and then passes it to the CPU. The GPU becomes the main actor, the CPU the supporting role.

Is it just an engineering sequence issue?

No, it’s a fundamental disagreement about “who will be the computing center in the future.”

Nvidia’s entire existence is to prove that GPUs should be the center of data processing, and CPUs should step aside. The CUDA ecosystem and all its design philosophy are “GPU-centric.” Lookaside architecture pre-sets “CPU as the boss,” which fundamentally conflicts with Nvidia’s worldview.

So when Nvidia looks for a telecom partner, it can’t choose Ericsson. It must choose a partner willing to put GPUs in the C position.

Nokia is that partner.

That’s why this 1 billion USD isn’t just a “strategic investment.” Jensen Huang has personally stamped a new map in the AI narrative—buying an entry point for Nvidia’s GPUs into 5 million base stations worldwide.

According to analyst firm Omdia’s forecast, by 2030, the cumulative AI-RAN market will exceed 200 billion USD.

If this story is told correctly, Huang’s 1 billion USD might be one of the highest return investments of his life.

Geopolitical help

Nokia’s comeback also has a sensitive undercurrent.

On April 13, 2026, Bank of America analyst Oliver Wong upgraded Nokia from “Neutral” to “Buy,” with a target price soaring from €6.87 to €10.70. That day, Nokia’s stock surged 9.67% in a single day, with trading volume 178% above the 3-month average.

In that report, Wong listed four reasons why Nokia was undervalued. The third reason, he wrote tactfully but very clearly:

“After European countries gradually restrict Huawei and ZTE, Nokia has effectively become the ‘last Western sovereign-grade supplier’ available.”

Plainly put: Europe wants to build sovereign data centers and 5G/6G networks; Chinese equipment can’t be used; the US doesn’t have such companies; the remaining Western suppliers are Nokia and Ericsson. But Ericsson lacks full-stack optical network capabilities, Infinera was bought by Nokia, and Cisco is an American company. So, Europe’s sovereign cloud funds almost exclusively flow to Nokia.

This is a classic “geopolitical arbitrage” opportunity. The shift in the international order has handed Nokia a big gift—if it remains in the race, it can enjoy this dividend.

Plus, the huge demand from US hyperscale cloud providers for optical networks, and T-Mobile’s bet on AI-RAN, three streams of capital are hitting Nokia from different directions.

The market took 18 months to catch on

Putting all clues together, you’ll see a very dramatic timeline:

June 2024: Nokia announces acquisition of Infinera

February 2025: Hotard appointed as new CEO

October 2025: Nvidia invests 1 billion USD

April 13, 2026: BofA upgrades, stock jumps 9.67% in one day

April 22, 2026: Q1 earnings report reveals €1 billion AI/cloud orders, optical network business +20%

April 27, 2026: CFRA doubles target price from $8 to $16, Nokia hits a new high since 2015

Noticed?

The fundamentals started shifting 18 months ago. But the market took 18 months to piece these clues together.

This is the classic “value discovery” process. When a story isn’t fully told, everyone treats it as “old wine in old bottle”; once the story is clear, valuation has already recovered a large part.

Nokia’s current forward P/E ratio is 26, not expensive for a 17% growth optical network business. But compared to its low point at the start of the year, it’s no longer the “forgotten stock” lying on the ground.

Chinese investors have focused on Nvidia, TSMC, Broadcom, AMD over the past two years—these are the engines of this AI wave.

But beyond the engine, there are the gearbox, drive shaft, tires, and highways.

The AI narrative is spreading from “chips” to “pipelines.”

The story of optical module makers has been told for over a year. The next assets the market might reprice are base stations, fiber optics, data center power supplies, cooling systems.

Stories won’t repeat exactly, but they will rhyme.

When a new technological paradigm truly arrives, the greatest Alpha may not be where it’s most obvious.

It’s in those corners you think have been “forgotten.”