Nokia Q2 2026: How the Telecom Giant Cashed In on the AI Supercycle

• Explosive AI/cloud revenue — more than double the prior year, driven by hyperscaler spending on data-center networking gear .
• Margin expansion — comparable operating margin rose to 9.0% from 8.3% a year earlier, helped by a product mix shift toward higher-value AI networking equipment .
• Order backlog visibility — the €2.8 billion of fresh AI/cloud orders gives multi-quarter revenue predictability .

How Nokia's AI Infrastructure Play Compares with Alphabet, TSMC, and ASML

All four companies are riding the same AI infrastructure wave, but at different layers of the stack.

Alphabet represents the hyperscaler demand side — the end customer spending tens of billions on data centers to run AI workloads. Google Cloud revenue surged 82% to $24.8 billion, and the company raised its full-year capex guide to as much as $205 billion .

TSMC is the foundry bottleneck — the sole high-volume manufacturer of Nvidia's AI accelerators. It posted record Q2 revenue of $40.2 billion (up 36%), and net profit surged 77% to T$706.6 billion, prompting a pledge of another $100 billion in U.S. investment .

ASML is the enabler's enabler — its extreme ultraviolet lithography machines are required to make the most advanced AI chips. ASML raised its 2026 revenue outlook to €43–45 billion and plans to expand capacity 30% in each of 2027 and 2028 .

Nokia is the networking infrastructure play — the optical transport, IP routing, and fixed-access gear that connects data centers. Its transformation from legacy telecom supplier to AI data-center networking vendor is what drove the doubling of AI/cloud sales and the raised guidance .

Notable Divergence

While Nokia's 8.3% revenue growth is modest compared to TSMC's 36% or Alphabet's 24%, the pace of change in Nokia's AI/cloud segment (+100% YoY) is as dramatic as any . Nokia is effectively pivoting from a flat-to-declining telecom market into a hypergrowth data-center vertical. TSMC and ASML are already pure plays on AI semiconductor demand; Nokia is in an earlier stage of that transformation, which is why the earnings beat and raised guidance carried significant weight.

Alphabet's stock fell about 3% after hours despite its blockbuster quarter, because the $195–$205 billion capex guide raised Wall Street's anxiety about whether AI spending will deliver commensurate returns . That "show-me" risk is less acute for Nokia, TSMC, and ASML, which sell the picks and shovels regardless of whether hyperscaler ROI materializes immediately.