Nokia stock surged roughly 140% year-to-date, driven by Nvidia's $1 billion investment and strong Q1 2026 earnings tied to AI infrastructure demand.

Nvidia invested $1 billion in Nokia at $6.01 per share in October 2025, taking about a 3% stake. The partnership focuses on AI-RAN, a system combining AI workloads with wireless network infrastructure, with T-Mobile as the first deployment partner.

Q1 2026 revenue reached 4.5 billion euros, up 4% year-over-year. Sales to AI and cloud customers surged 49%, and the Optical Networks segment grew 20%. Nokia booked 1 billion euros in new cloud orders, mostly for optical networking equipment used in AI data centers.

Nokia raised full-year operating profit guidance to between 2.0 billion and 2.5 billion euros, with Network Infrastructure growth now expected at 12% to 14% and Optical and IP Networks projected to grow 18% to 20%. The company is expanding capex guidance to as much as 1 billion euros to increase optical manufacturing capacity.

Nokia's AI-RAN platform now has 10 public customers, including Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, SoftBank, and NTT Docomo. The company opened an AI Networking Innovation Lab in Sunnyvale, California, in May alongside AMD, Lenovo, Supermicro, and Keysight.