Nvidia’s $1 Billion Bet Aims To Transform Nokia Into The West’s Answer To Huawei

The endless stream of AI headlines continues…

Just ahead of the lunch hour in New York, Bloomberg reported that Nvidia will invest $1 billion in Nokia, acquiring a 2.9% stake by purchasing 166 million shares at $6.01 each. The headline was enough to catapult Nokia’s shares in Europe up 17%. U.S.-listed shares were briefly halted, now up 21%.

Under the new partnership, Nvidia’s AI chips will power Nokia’s AI-accelerated 5G and 6G software and will explore integrating Nokia’s data center technologies into Nvidia’s own infrastructure. The deal transforms Nokia into the only Western full-stack alternative to Huawei in the telecommunications grid.

CEO Justin Hotard has led Nokia’s impressive turnaround. He recently acquired Infinera for $2.3 billion to expand into AI networking hardware. For Nvidia, this partnership adds to the ever-expanding list of AI investments, which includes OpenAI, Wayve, Oxa, Revolut, PolyAI, and a billion-euro data center project with Deutsche Telekom.

U.S.-listed Nokia shares jumped as much as 21%.

The 21% move higher is the largest intraday gain in U.S.-listed Nokia shares since January 2021.

What happened to Nokia? Thought it was dead. Everyone who was around in the 1990s and early 2000s who had a Nokia handset remembers this…

Now, Nokia is being positioned to become the “Huawei of the West.” What a dramatic turnaround.