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Last year, Nvidia's $1B investment in Nokia caught my attention. It wasn't the investment itself that interested me as much as the obvious question: What does Nvidia see that most investors don't.
The Nokia most people remember hasn't really existed for years. Today it's a networking infrastructure company with businesses spanning optical transport, IP routing, fiber, cloud networking and mobile infrastructure. More recently, AI has started becoming a meaningful part of the story.
Everyone is focused on the companies building AI models or selling GPUs. What gets discussed far less is the infrastructure needed to connect tens of thousands of GPUs together. AI clusters require massive amounts of high-speed optical networking, switching and data-center connectivity, and that's an area where Nokia has quietly been gaining traction. Management has repeatedly pointed to growing demand from hyperscalers and AI data centers, while the acquisition of Infinera strengthens its position in optical networking.
Another thing that stands out is Bell Labs. It's easy to overlook because it doesn't directly show up in quarterly earnings, but Bell Labs continues to be one of the industry's premier research organizations. Nokia is leading Europe's Hexa-X and Hexa-X-II initiatives, helping shape 6G standards years before commercial deployment. That's not a near-term earnings driver, but it does suggest the company is still investing in technologies that could matter over the next decade.
The bear case is also pretty clear, telecom spending has been weak, Nokia’s growth hasn’t been linear, competition remains intense and AI networking is still a relatively small part of the business today.
What I find interesting from a value perspective is that the market already has all of this priced in. Lot of investors already assume the AI opportunity is fully reflected in Nokia's share price because of the recent run-up. That may prove to be true. But if AI and cloud demand continues to translate into stronger optical networking sales it will result in higher margins and a larger share of earnings for this part of business over the next few years.
So if AI networking, optical infrastructure and data-center connectivity become a meaningfully larger part of the business over time, the company people think they're analyzing today may not be the company that exists several years from now and that gives a bull case scenario for NOK.
Earlier this year, Nokia successfully deployed and validated key operations of the first cellular network on the Moon as part of the IM-2 mission, proving its Lunar Surface Communication System in one of the most challenging communication environments. Although, I don't view lunar communications as part of the investment thesis today.
That's the part I'm trying to figure out. Is NOK simply a mature networking business benefiting from a temporary AI tailwind, or can it become something much more.