Nokia’s Twin Leaps in AI and 6G Mask a Lingering Rivalry
21.05.2026 - 14:21:48 | boerse-global.de
Nokia is placing two ambitious bets at once — one on the data-centre floor and another on the radio tower — yet its share price continues to reflect a market that sees the distance to competitors as much as the technology.
The Finnish telecoms group this week opened an AI networking lab in Sunnyvale, California, and separately revealed a 6G proof-of-concept with Japan’s KDDI that slashes base-station power use by 40 percent. Both milestones feed a longer-term growth narrative, but neither has yet converted into the kind of order book that would close the gap with archrival Cisco.
AI lab opens, but orders stretch gap
Nokia’s new AI Networking Innovation Lab in Sunnyvale, launched on Thursday, is designed to develop and test AI-native networking for data centres. Partners include AMD, Lenovo, Supermicro and Keysight, with AMD stressing the lab’s open, standards-based approach that avoids vendor lock-in. Cloud providers can validate solutions before scaling, under what Nokia calls “Nokia Validated Designs”.
The lab’s opening came just after Nokia reported a comparable operating profit of €281 million in the first quarter of 2026 — a 54 percent year-on-year jump and well above the consensus forecast of €250 million. AI cloud revenue surged 49 percent, and the AI order book now totals a billion euros. For the full year Nokia maintains its guidance of €2.0?2.5 billion in comparable operating profit.
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The numbers sent the stock briefly to a 16-year high. Since the start of the year the shares have more than doubled, leaving the 52-week low of €3.49 far in the rear-view mirror. But the move was not sustained. On the day of the lab’s opening, the stock shed roughly one percent to €11.65, even as the OMX Helsinki 25 edged higher.
The reason is simple: Cisco reports AI orders of roughly $5.3 billion — more than five times Nokia’s current backlog. That margin explains the market’s caution.
6G test wrings out waste without a contract
On the network side, Nokia’s test with KDDI Research, completed on May 20, ran at the company’s Bell Labs facility in Murray Hill. The trial simulated a commercial 5G environment and tested “Intelligent 4D Resource Optimization” — a multi-dimensional coordination of time, frequency, space and transmit power. Standard systems often optimise these elements separately; Nokia and KDDI claim their approach can cut base-station power consumption by up to 40 percent, or alternatively boost throughput fourfold for the same energy.
Network operators are under constant pressure from rising data traffic driven by video, cloud services, IoT and AI. Lower energy costs in future 6G networks could become a powerful selling point — but the test did not result in a commercial contract. Neither the project value nor a timeline for deployment was disclosed. The work dates back to a November 2025 agreement between Nokia Bell Labs and KDDI Research focusing on energy-efficient base stations and robust core networks.
The next phase is standardisation: both parties aim to feed the technology into 3GPP’s 6G specifications, and will present results at Wireless Japan × Wireless Technology Park 2026 in Tokyo.
Nokia’s stock closed on Wednesday at €11.73, up 32.21 percent on a monthly basis but still off the recent peak. The pullback underscores how skittish the market remains after the sharp rally.
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Vodafone adds a cloud note
A separate signal came from the software division. In Frankfurt, Nokia worked with Vodafone and Amazon Web Services to test cloud-based core network functions for IoT. The next step will address security and data sovereignty, with commercial trials expected later in the year.
Fundamentals as the final arbiter
Operationally, Nokia’s Mobile Infrastructure segment remains the core driver. In the first quarter, comparable net sales there rose 3 percent on a currency-adjusted basis. Group-wide, comparable net revenue came in at €4.5 billion, with an operating margin of 6.2 percent.
The full-year operating profit target of €2.0?2.5 billion is the benchmark against which every technology announcement will be judged. The Sunnyvale lab and the 6G test strengthen the narrative, but until they translate into orders that narrow the gap with Cisco, investors are likely to keep one eye on the numbers and the other on the competition.
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