[HN Gopher] Nvidia takes $1B stake in Nokia
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Nvidia takes $1B stake in Nokia
Author : kjhughes
Score : 102 points
Date : 2025-10-28 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| sherinjosephroy wrote:
| Interesting move. Nvidia's already owning the AI hardware space,
| and now teaming with Nokia shows telecoms want a piece of it too.
| Feels like the next battle is about who controls the data pipes,
| not just the chips.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I was thinking more that they already own Mellanox, so it makes
| sense to buy into a networking company. Nokia still makes
| telecom gear, but they also make switches and routers.
| greatgib wrote:
| Maybe they got so much money with the AI boom that they don't
| know anymore what to do with the cash at hand and so starts to
| invest it in direct now.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I was reading an article earlier today that said passive
| investing is more than 50% of the market--and since most ETFs
| allocate by market cap, it causes a reinforcing feedback loop
| for market cap leaders.
| tverbeure wrote:
| What is the mechanism behind that?
|
| In a hypothetical market with 100% ETFs, you'd have a status
| quo.
|
| Edit: maybe not, since you have ETFs that invest in, say,
| Nasdaq only, which is tech oriented and would influence
| S&P500.
| basiccalendar74 wrote:
| Passive investing is not an issue, but the default bias
| towards large cap equities like SP500, Nasdaq100. Passive
| investing through total market ETFs (like VTI) maintains the
| status quo.
|
| For example, if they are only two companies, say with 1T and
| 4T market cap. If one invests 5M into a total market ETF, 1M
| is allocated to company A and 4M to company B. But since
| company B is 4x bigger than company A, the upward price
| pressure is the same for both companies.
| stevehawk wrote:
| they need to ensure future, potential customers and the best
| way to do that is to own them and tell them to buy your goods.
|
| in five years, NVDA's business strategy will be like
| CocaCola's, forcing bottlers to buy their syrups.
| wnevets wrote:
| Add to the list of AI cash merry go round [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3JfOxx6Hh4
| echelon wrote:
| This isn't the gotcha everyone in the media thinks it is.
|
| Nvidia is using its revenues to quickly invest in bets that are
| simultaneously customers.
|
| If anything, it's a triple win.
|
| - taking advantage of cash it needs to deploy
|
| - making new investments in areas NVidia wants to shape
|
| - making new customers that continue to buy Nvidia GPUs,
| especially if they're successful
|
| Some of these ventures may fail, but it's better than
| distributing dividends or issuing stock buybacks if you believe
| this technology will be useful in the future.
|
| Companies doing this purely off of equity, stock valuation, and
| product/services agreements are even smarter as they're using
| pure hype to fund strategy.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Cooking your books and calling it a "triple win" is certainly
| interesting. Nokia just diluted their shares in hopes that AI
| hype keeps the price pumped up. They do keep the $1B so I
| guess we'll see what they do with it (other than buying NVDA
| GPUs, of course)
| f4uCL9dNSnQm wrote:
| I always forget that Nokia bought out Siemens part of "Nokia
| Siemens Networks" and it is now just "Nokia networks".
| pavlov wrote:
| And they also bought Alcatel-Lucent.
|
| Nokia today is sort of "everybody who was making networks in
| Europe and North America except Ericsson".
| dustbunny wrote:
| I think the US Gov probably "incentizied" Nvidias stake in Intel,
| and I wonder if they did here as well.
|
| It's like "if your going to sell chips to China, you have to
| spend some of the money funding non-Chinese tech".
|
| Nokia's capabilities to deliver 5G networks is a direct
| competitor to Huawei, right?
|
| Is Nvidia functionally an strategic hedge fund of the US
| Government? Would this fall under Jeffrey Sach's realm?
| re-thc wrote:
| > I think the US Gov probably "incentizied" Nvidias stake in
| Intel, and I wonder if they did here as well.
|
| If you wanted something in the x86 space it was either Intel or
| AMD. AMD is a direct competitor. If I was Nvidia I'd have done
| something about Intel. At least stop them from crashing
| further.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Yes, worked there and can confirm Nokia (previously known as
| Alcatel Lucent) is Cellphone infastructure.
| lizardking wrote:
| Do you mean David Sacks, the AI czar?
| dustbunny wrote:
| Yes, sorry
| amoshi wrote:
| >I think the US Gov probably "incentizied" Nvidias stake in
| Intel, and I wonder if they did here as well.
|
| They definitely did, Intel existing is probably an issue of
| national security at this point, if Intel fell then there'd be
| the risk of some other nation's company being part of the
| duopoly.
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| > They definitely did, Intel existing is probably an issue of
| national security at this point, if Intel fell then there'd
| be the risk of some other nation's company being part of the
| duopoly.
|
| Mind elaborating? Who are the players in the duopoly?
| KK7NIL wrote:
| Presumably referring to the logic foundry business where
| TSMC is the monopoly power and Intel, Samsung and SMIC are
| looking to turn it into a duopoly.
| tremon wrote:
| Or they could be referring to the Wintel monopoly
| (Windows+Intel), or the x86 duopoly (Intel+AMD), or the
| FPGA duopoly (Altera=>Intel + Xilinx=>AMD)...
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Let's not forget GloFo although they are more interested
| in bulk at this point.mm
| KK7NIL wrote:
| Global Foundries sent their EUV machine back (and paid a
| fat restocking fee to do it), they've stopped trying to
| compete at the leading edge of logic processes.
|
| SMIC has a DUV multi-patterning 7 nm node which is
| already economically uncompetitive with EUV 7 nm nodes
| (except for PRC subsidies) and the economics of DUV only
| get worse further down, but at least they're trying and
| will certainly be the first client to use the Chinese EUV
| machines, whenever those come online.
| rzerowan wrote:
| Not a direct competitor, they are at a No3 slot behind Ericsson
| with a small global footprintmainly concentrated in
| NorthAmerica and some EU markets. However most of the 5G/5G+
| patents are Huawei owned and FRAND so in any case the entiti in
| the drivers seat is H , thas why even the whole OpenRAN project
| didnt get far. Most likely like you surmiseits a geo-political
| hedge play.
| addei wrote:
| Correct if I am wrong, but it is also noted that most
| essential 5G related patents are held by trio of Qualcomm,
| Ericsson and Nokia.
| rzerowan wrote:
| Yep the big three plus Huawei with a bit of an edge on them
| with te standard essential patent , that they collaborate
| in a pool with.Although in the matter of mobile
| modems/radios Qualcomm has an edge over all the others -
| not so much in the backend/longhaul telco space.
| Additionally if i recall most of the 6G stuff is being
| pushed by Huawei since most of it rests on the current
| 5G/5G+ work.
| Wheaties466 wrote:
| I get that they are now involved and contribute to 5g.
| But its pretty shameful how huawei had acquired the
| ability to do so.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerns_over_Chinese_invol
| vem...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-
| china...
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/13/us-charges-
| huawei-w...
| bgwalter wrote:
| Microsoft (Elop and Ballmer) ruined Nokia's cell phone line that
| led to massive layoffs.
|
| Let's see if this investment leads to the final elimination of an
| EU tech company. Why does Finland permit this?
| linhns wrote:
| Nokia has been teetering on the edge for a period, so they
| would welcome such an investment.
| foobarian wrote:
| Nokia has been at the edge of the abyss for a period, and
| then they made a giant leap forward /s
| phatfish wrote:
| Nokia never executed on a touch screen OS. If i remember their
| final attempt with a Linux based OS was considered "good", but
| it was too little, too late. It was already over when they were
| scooped up by Microsoft, who were desperate themselves.
|
| Pretty sure Nokia was glad to offload the handset business so
| they could feed money into markets they were still competitive
| in.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes they did, a few Symbian models used touch, as did
| original Maemo device that only did wlan initially.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7710
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770_Internet_Tablet
| ptx wrote:
| All the Symbian devices used resistive touch screens,
| though, didn't they? E.g. the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. So the
| user experience was not quite the same as with capacitive
| touch.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is still touch, and yes you could use finger nails as
| well on those models.
|
| However you have not read the links, not all models were
| alike.
|
| > The Nokia 7710 is a mobile phone developed by Nokia and
| announced on 2 November 2004.[1] It was the first Nokia
| device with a touchscreen
| Geee wrote:
| That isn't really true. The N9 was definitely ahead of it's
| time with a buttonless gesture based UI similar to the modern
| iPhone.
| triceratops wrote:
| To be fair Nokia, like Blackberry, was effed the moment iPhone
| launched. Elop hastened the decline but it was coming
| regardless.
| Insanity wrote:
| It's not quite the same, BlackBerry was mostly a 'phone'
| company and not a 'full telecom' company, in terms of
| hardware the produced. Nokia has other products that are more
| b2b than b2c.
| triceratops wrote:
| Nokia has existed for over a hundred years. The success of
| its phones made it a major name and a ton of money in the
| early 2000s. Its other lines of business have continued to
| operate quietly. But it's no longer the force it was.
| distances wrote:
| It wasn't iPhone that doomed Nokia, it was Android. All of
| the sudden all Nokia's competitors could ship fairly good
| touch screen phones, while previously Nokia had a virtual
| monopoly on advanced mobile operating systems (barring
| BlackBerry in the US).
|
| Granted, it was going to happen anyway, probably through
| Microsoft if Google hadn't commoditized that market first.
| jampekka wrote:
| Nokia's market cap is over $40B, so $1B is not really Microsoft
| level coup. At least yet.
| chollida1 wrote:
| Microsoft did no such thing. Nokia is very directly responsible
| for its own cell phone failings.
|
| This line of thought really needs to die.
|
| The Nokia board hired Elop from Microsoft because they wanted
| to bet the company on the Microsoft phone, full stop.
|
| If you want to assign blame, then its on Nokia for wanting to
| pursue that strategy.
| pjmlp wrote:
| As someone that was an employee at the time, I am also fed up
| with the anti-Microsoft narrative.
|
| Also there are some errors there, Windows Phone only became
| an alternative after the burning platform memo, that wasn't
| at all well received neither internally, nor by the 3rd party
| devs that had just started to migrate their Symbian tooling
| yet again, this time to Qt + PIPS + Carbide.
|
| The biggest blame with the board, as revealed on the Finish
| press, was the bonus clause on Elop contract to sell Nokia
| Mobile business.
| nsonha wrote:
| yes Nokia had years to come up with a better OS and they
| didn't. Even Samsung failed at this endeavor years later.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| MSFT accelerated the invetiable.
|
| There was just no way Nokia could match Apple on the OS who
| spent years prior to the idea of a smartphone making it a good
| match for the hardware of the time. And MSFT deservedly got
| punished for not investing in creating a better OS and Apple
| deservedly rewarded for doing so.
| tgma wrote:
| They may never have had the chance to beat Apple but they
| could certainly have bet on Android instead of Windows Phone
| and today they probably would have been in a different place
| like Samsung.
| hypeatei wrote:
| The bubble burst is going to be devastating for these smaller
| companies caught up in the frenzy. I'm staying invested in
| companies like Alphabet that are taking part in the race but
| offer more than just AI hopium.
| baal80spam wrote:
| ITT: Bubblers in full force!
| randomname4325 wrote:
| Does this signal the a big market for AI processing is at the
| edge?
| pavlov wrote:
| Nokia today is the combination of the network businesses of
| Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel and Lucent.
|
| They have substantial operations in North America. T-Mobile uses
| primarily their hardware. Nokia still operates Bell Labs which
| came originally from AT&T via Lucent.
|
| As the other global options for network hardware are Ericsson,
| Samsung and Huawei, Nokia is the closest to a "Made in USA"
| solution. Its HQ is in Finland but at least it's a NATO country
| now.
|
| So they're more important to US infrastructure than might appear
| at first glance.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Unless they bought back Siemens into NSN, I think not.
|
| I was part of the Nokia => NSN transition, and saw that S
| change back from Siemens into Solutions, with the money they
| got back from selling Nokia Mobile to Microsoft.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Ericsson is swedish Samsung is south korean I can agree that
| Huawei is chinese so that's a bad choice
|
| But why is Ericsson(swedish), Samsung(south korean) not
| considered made in US in the sense that atleast south korea has
| strong relations with america iirc and also I just recently
| checked and it seems that sweden has also become a part of
| nato. So some of these can be just as good.
|
| Although I still agree that Nokia might be important in general
| but I just wanted to point/question it out I suppose.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Quietly supplying telecom equipment all this time, it really
| isn't the Nokia most know. Crazy that Nokia is still even a
| thing. Who noticed that logo had even changed (two years ago in
| 2023).
| foobarian wrote:
| Honestly, I feel like this is what Nokia always was, and why
| they fell behind in consumer tech
| iszomer wrote:
| That growing narrative regarding all these AI-centric companies
| "funding each other" is beginning to look a lot like
| Attrition.org's (former) sexchart..
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Based on the stock price, some people knew it already a week ago
| :-)
| cinntaile wrote:
| Why? I don't get what's in it for Nvidia or Nokia?
|
| AI on IoT devices?
| nasmorn wrote:
| The stock of NVIDIA can buy the 230 smallest S&P 500 companies.
| Which are still quite big companies. I recently learned this fact
| and I think it is pretty wild.
| incognito124 wrote:
| Each of them separately, or all of them together?
| tverbeure wrote:
| If it were separately, they'd be able to buy 499 of S&P 500
| companies...
| bazmattaz wrote:
| Do you mean their market cap? Sure but that doesn't equal their
| profits or cash reserves which are considerably less so NVIDIA
| couldn't buy the 230 companies even if I wanted to
| mgh2 wrote:
| What exactly is "AI-RAN"?
| klaussilveira wrote:
| Finally. NOK to the moon. Now do BB.
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