Nokia’s AI Lab Debut and Insider Buying Converge as Stock Reaches 16-Year Peak

Nokia shares close at €14.19, highest since 2010, after AI pivot drives 49% revenue growth. Executive buys $1.1M in stock, raising guidance and launching new lab.

Nokia’s shares have entered territory not seen since 2010, closing at €14.19 in European trading on Wednesday after a blistering run that has more than quadrupled the stock since the start of the year. But the rally is being accompanied by a rare signal from inside the company: an executive has just poured $1.1 million of his own money into the equity.

Kari Owczarek, a manager at the Finnish telecom equipment maker, executed two purchases in the span of a week. On May 22 he bought 32,595 American depositary shares at a volume-weighted average price of $15.3457, for a total of roughly $500,000. A second transaction, carried out at $15.9878 per share, added another $600,000, bringing the total stake to about $1.1 million. The trades were disclosed via a Form 6-K under the EU Market Abuse Regulation.

Insider purchases are no guarantee of future price appreciation, but they offer a clear vote of confidence from someone with front-row visibility into the business. And that business has been undergoing a rapid transformation.

The catalyst for the re?rating is Nokia’s pivot toward artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company recently opened an AI Networking Innovation Lab in Silicon Valley, a testing ground for high-performance network architectures built for large-scale AI training and inference workloads. Partners from day one include AMD, Lenovo, Supermicro and Keysight, a lineup that underscores the technological ambitions of the new division.

That lab is more than a PR exercise. In the first quarter of 2026, revenue from AI and cloud customers jumped 49%, and Nokia secured roughly €1 billion in new cloud infrastructure orders during the period. Total quarterly sales rose to €4.5 billion, while the comparable operating profit surged 54% to €281 million — well above the consensus estimate of €250 million.

Nokia also raised its full-year growth forecast for the optical and IP networks division to 18–20%, up from the previous 10–12% range. The integration of Infinera, the optical networking specialist acquired last year, is already contributing: that segment grew 20% in the most recent quarter. The traditional mobile networks business still accounts for more than half of group revenue, but the story is increasingly about the new growth engine.

The market’s reaction has been swift. In U.S. trading on May 26, Nokia closed at $16.46, a gain of 6.4% on the day and a fresh 52-week high. The share price now sits 122.5% above its 200-day moving average, a measure of just how extreme the momentum has become.

Analysts are taking notice. Morgan Stanley raised its price target to €14, JPMorgan upgraded the stock to Overweight, and Deutsche Bank, Arete and Nordea all followed with more constructive ratings. The surge has pushed Nokia’s market value well beyond the levels many sell-side models previously assumed, but the improved fundamentals are providing a rationale.

Looking ahead, several milestones could sustain the narrative. Peer Ciena reports quarterly results in early June, which may offer a read?through for the optical market. New hyperscaler partnership announcements are possible, and a potential inclusion in the Euro Stoxx 50 index in September would trigger additional inflows from index-tracking funds.

For now, the combination of insider buying, an AI lab that signals long?term commitment, and a clear acceleration in high?margin cloud orders has turned Nokia into one of the year’s standout performers. The risk, as always with such a sharp rally, is that expectations have moved ahead of delivery. Every fresh data point on AI orders, margins and the Infinera integration will be scrutinised more closely from here.