Nokia’s Defense AI and 5G Gains Offset Fidelity Reduction as Stock Consolidates
Published on 07/10/2026 at 13:06 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Nokia is making strides on two strategic fronts – military artificial intelligence and European 5G expansion – even as its shares cool off from a breathtaking rally that has more than doubled the stock since January. The Finnish telecom equipment maker’s equity dipped 1.7% to €11.11 on Friday, extending its retreat from June’s 52-week high of €14.97. That peak now sits 26% above the current price, yet the year-to-date gain of 99.89% underscores just how far the shares have climbed from last August’s trough of €3.45.
The most recent catalyst came on 9 July, when Nokia Defense and NestAI – one of Europe’s fastest-growing AI labs focused on defence technology – unveiled the first operational capabilities from their partnership. The collaboration, backed by a €100 million investment from Nokia and the Finnish state fund Tesi in November 2025, has yielded three integrated components in just eight months. Nokia’s mobile 5G networks are now linked with NestOS, NestAI’s adaptive battlefield operating system. Nokia’s radio-network planning models have been folded into NestOS mission planning to eliminate dead zones during rapid multidomain operations. A third piece combines Nokia’s ISAC sensing-and-communications technology with NestAI’s multi-sensor tracking, enabling earlier and wider threat detection in connectivity-constrained environments. Mikko Hautala, chairman of Nokia Defense, described the milestone as strategically vital, accelerating the sovereign technologies NATO requires for next-generation missions.
On the commercial side, Nokia is winning ground against arch-rival Ericsson in Europe’s 5G market. In November 2025, the company secured a three-year contract with Telecom Italia to modernise roughly 10,000 sites that Ericsson had previously operated. The deal is expected to lift Nokia’s share of the Italian operator’s radio network by about 40 percentage points. That success follows a similar victory at VodafoneThree in the UK, underscoring a pattern of market-share gains in the continent’s telecom infrastructure buildout.
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Meanwhile, Nokia is doubling down on AI infrastructure beyond defence. In May, the company opened an innovation lab in Sunnyvale, California, where it works with AMD, Keysight, Lenovo and Nscale to develop high-performance network architectures for AI model training and operation. The lab tests Nokia Validated Designs in multi-vendor data-centre environments. Analyst JPMorgan recently upgraded its view on Nokia after reports that the company had secured roughly €1 billion in AI- and cloud-related optics orders. To meet surging demand for high-speed data-transmission components, Nokia is increasing its photonics-chip capacity in Pennsylvania tenfold.
Offsetting these positive developments is a continued reduction in stake by FMR LLC, the Fidelity affiliate. According to a mandatory filing, FMR cut its holding to 4.87% of Nokia’s 5.74 billion shares and 4.59% of voting rights as of 8 July, down from 5.20% and 4.92% respectively. This marks the second such disclosure in two weeks; on 29 June, FMR’s voting-rights stake had already fallen below the 5% reporting threshold. In a separate transaction on 9 July, Nokia transferred approximately 43.5 million treasury shares to participants in its employee incentive programmes, leaving the company with 88.6 million own shares. The transfers were authorised by a board decision in October 2025.
On the technical front, the stock is now in a consolidation phase. It trades 8% below its 50-day moving average of €12.10, while sitting 46.86% above its 200-day average of €7.58 – a gap that highlights the magnitude of the year-long rally. The relative strength index at 46.1 points to neither overbought nor oversold conditions. Annualised 30-day volatility of 71.6% confirms the share remains a wild ride for traders.
Investors will get a clearer picture on 23 July, when Nokia reports second-quarter earnings. The market will be watching to see whether the defence AI partnership, the Italian 5G win and the flood of AI-related optics orders are beginning to translate into hard order backlog – and whether the persistent trimming by a major institutional holder signals a broader shift in sentiment or simple portfolio rebalancing.
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