Nokia’s €1.1M Insider Bet on the AI Infrastructure Shift Lands Just as a European Fiber Pact Takes Shape

Nokia's CDO invests €1.1M after announcing a European optical network partnership with Lightera, as AI revenue jumps 49% and analysts raise price targets.

Nokia’s stock has already more than doubled this year, but the company’s chief development officer is betting that the best is yet to come. Konstanty Owczarek spent roughly €1.1m on Nokia shares in a single week, including a €600,000 purchase on 26 May and another €500,000 two days earlier. For market watchers, the timing is anything but random: the insider accumulation comes just hours after Nokia announced a partnership that extends its optical networking reach into four European countries.

The deal, confirmed on 27 May, pairs Nokia’s PON technologies — GPON, XGS-PON and 25G-PON systems — with Lightera’s passive optical infrastructure. The goal is to give businesses in the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal a faster, more energy-efficient alternative to legacy copper networks. Sylvain Rajaud, Nokia’s head of sales for Europe, described the move as an “architectural shift,” driven by the bandwidth, latency and security demands of AI workloads.

That architectural shift is already visible in Nokia’s financials. In the first quarter of 2026, revenue from AI and cloud clients jumped 49% year-on-year, and the segment now accounts for about 8% of total group sales. The Optical Networks unit, a direct beneficiary of the data-centre buildout, grew 17% on a currency-adjusted basis in late 2025. To accelerate the trend, Nokia opened a dedicated AI networking innovation lab in Sunnyvale, California on 21 May, where it will work with cloud and AI partners on new data-centre architectures.

The renewed focus on AI connectivity is being underwritten by a leaner corporate structure. Since 1 January 2026, Nokia has operated two main segments: Network Infrastructure and Mobile Infrastructure. Management aims to ride what it calls the “AI connectivity super-cycle” — the long-term capital spending programmes of the hyperscalers, which are expected to push total network outlays past $700bn in the near term.

Analysts are taking notice. Morgan Stanley raised its price target to €14 and kept an “Overweight” rating, while Deutsche Bank set a target of €8.50 with a “Buy” recommendation. The strategic pivot began with Nokia’s acquisition of Infinera in February 2025, which brought in the optical-networking technology critical for modern data centres. A further boost came from Nvidia’s $1bn investment in AI-RAN technology at the end of 2025, linking Nokia’s future directly to the AI boom.

Despite the stock’s 135% surge since the start of the year and a 177% gain over the past twelve months, the shares are trading at €13.07 — roughly 7.6% below the 52-week high of €14.14. The 50-day moving average stands at €9.64 and the 200-day average at €6.42, while the relative strength index of 52.1 suggests a neutral near-term posture. The 52-week low was €3.49.

Nokia’s leadership is aiming for comparable operating profit of between €2.0bn and €2.5bn in 2026, with a longer-term target of €2.7bn to €3.2bn by 2028. The next major test for the stock comes on 23 July, when the company publishes its half-year results for the second quarter.