Nokia Shares Rise Nearly 5% Pre-Market as It Partners With Microsoft to Advance Network Automation

TradingKey - Nokia (NOK) announced on Thursday a further expansion of its partnership with Microsoft (MSFT). The two companies will integrate Nokia Data Suite with Microsoft Fabric to jointly build a data and AI platform for telecom operators, accelerating the deployment of network automation and Agentic AI across operator networks. Following the announcement, Nokia's U.S. pre-market stock rose nearly 5% to $10.59; the company's ADR had previously closed up 3.05% at $10.14 on Wednesday.

Nokia pre-market share price trend, Source: FUTUBULL

This partnership primarily targets the issue of fragmented data in telecom networks. By connecting Nokia's data products into Microsoft Fabric, operators can integrate data from different equipment vendors, network domains, and IT systems, while leveraging Microsoft's AI and data analytics tools to accelerate network fault identification, optimization, and automated handling.

The initial applications will focus on wireless access networks, including automated assurance for 5G voice services, network coverage and capacity analytics, and predictive maintenance. AI Agents can automatically detect anomalies, analyze underlying causes, and provide recommendations, allowing operators to significantly reduce manual data organization and network troubleshooting.

Nokia stated that the solution supports multi-vendor and cross-network domain environments, and can be deployed in public clouds, hybrid clouds, or on-premises enterprise infrastructure. The two companies hope that a unified data foundation will enable operators to gradually enhance their level of autonomous network operations while retaining essential human oversight and security controls.

Notably, Nokia had previously partnered with Nvidia to advance AI-RAN, and announced this week that several global telecom operators are transitioning from early verification to laboratory and live network testing.