SpaceX (SPCX) made history on Friday – raising $75 billion in the largest IPO “ever” – promptly gaining 19% in its Nasdaq debut.
The frenzy is real, the story is compelling, but the valuation, hovering around the $2 trillion mark, is already priced for perfection.
And for investors who prefer conviction over crowd psychology, there is a quieter, more grounded opportunity worth considering – Nokia (NOK).
What makes Nokia stock a compelling buy in 2026
Most people still associate Nokia with the brick-like handsets that dominated the early 2000s. That era is long gone.
Today, Nokia is a global communications infrastructure firm operating across four major business segments – mobile networks, network infrastructure, cloud and network services, and Nokia tech – selling equipment to carriers, hyperscalers, and data center operators across more than 100 countries.
In 2026, the brand licensing operation that handles the phone business is a footnote; the real story is in optical networks, IP routing, and next-generation wireless buildout.
Bank of America Securities now characterizes Nokia as a key data center interconnect and optical transport player, not merely a traditional mobile gear vendor.
And that rebranding is backed by hard numbers. Nokia’s Q1 results showed a 49% year-over-year growth in AI and cloud net sales, alongside €1 billion in orders from AI and cloud customers.
The company raised its “network infrastructure” growth expectations for the full year, particularly for its optical networks and IP networks subsegments that are critical for AI and cloud data centers.
All in all, Nokia stock is not a turnaround story anymore – it’s an infrastructure story with genuine momentum.
Nvidia partnership makes NOK shares super attractive
The single most “underappreciated” development in Nokia’s recent history is the depth of its team-up with Nvidia.
In late 2025, Nvidia made a direct equity investment in Nokia at $6.01 per share – a huge credibility signal that the broader market has been slow to fully price in.
The two companies are collaborating on AI-powered radio access network tech aimed at building the infrastructure backbone for the 6G era, at a moment when global internet traffic is exploding.
According to Nokia’s own projections, global network traffic is expected to grow roughly fivefold from 2024 levels through 2034, with AI workloads accounting for a disproportionate share of that demand.
Nokia opened an AI Networking Innovation Lab in Sunnyvale this May, a facility designed to co-develop next-generation networks for AI data centers alongside cloud and AI partners.
Why disciplined investors should look to Nokia
The SpaceX IPO is a genuine technological marvel wrapped in a financial instrument that demands you believe everything goes right, forever, from day one.
At its session high on Friday, SpaceX briefly touched a market cap approaching $2.21 trillion – a figure that leaves virtually no room for error, execution risk, or the “ordinary turbulence” that every young public company faces.
Let’s face it: history is littered with transformative firms that proved terrible early IPO investments precisely because the hype front-ran the fundamentals by years.
Nokia stock, by contrast, offers a different kind of proposition. With about $19.22 billion in annual revenue and a market cap of $82 billion, it trades at a meaningful discount to sales.
It’s an almost paradoxical setup for a business posting 49% artificial intelligence (AI) sales growth and attracting NVDA as a strategic investor.
NOK shares outperformed the broader technology equipment sector on Friday, even as the market’s attention was consumed entirely by the SpaceX spectacle – a quiet reminder that the most durable gains are often made away from the spotlight.
For investors who want real AI infrastructure exposure without paying a “once-in-a-generation” premium to get it, Nokia deserves a serious look, especially since Wall Street firms also currently rate it at “Overweight”.
This post This stock is a better pick than SpaceX for disciplined investors may be modified as updates unfold
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