The timing of Nokia’s bulletins final week about persevering with European reductions and growing US investments is awkward – and raises questions, maybe, when thought of with parallel EU calls in Germany and France, the place it’s slicing jobs, for home-made sovereign EU infrastructure.
In sum – what to know:
EU cuts and a US pivot – Nokia notified a whole lot of R&D employees in Germany and France of redundancies simply days earlier than asserting a significant restructure in New York and a $4 billion funding into US R&D and manufacturing.
Geopolitics and sovereignty – notionally, the timing jars with political calls in Berlin and Paris for Europe to scale back reliance on US tech – at the same time as US hyperscalers speed up eastwards to appease EU sovereignty guidelines.
Larger strategic questions – Nokia maintains its line about an “AI supercycle”, however the timing of constant European reductions and growing US investments is incongruous, and begs questions on its larger technique.
It was a wierd week for Nokia, final week. Right here’s a timeline, plus some broader market context; possibly there’s a strategy to be a part of the dots, and possibly there isn’t.
Friday, November 14: employees in Germany and France, together with a vital contingent engaged in its mental property and standardisation work with ETSI and 3GPP, are knowledgeable their roles will go. This contains round 700 folks at its workplace Munich, which is a subway journey from the European Patent Workplace (EPO). They’re pegged for redundancy in two waves, they’re knowledgeable – 300 in 2026, and the remaining 400 by 2030, which is, nominally, when a lot of the R&D work for 6G and ‘AI-native networks’ (cell and stuck / fibre) will probably be accomplished. One other 427 roles will go in France – coated in native press as Nokia’s “gradual loss of life” within the nation – cut up between its workplaces in Massy in southern Paris (Nokia Bell Labs Paris Saclay) and Lannion in Brittany; each are additionally main R&D centres for the agency.
Wednesday, November 19: the agency holds its Capital Markets Day (CMD) in New York within the US, and declares a restructure that sees 5 enterprise models successfully reorganised into simply two (Cellular Infrastructure and Community Infrastructure; MI and NI) – in pursuit of an “AI supercycle”. A 3rd group of non-priority ‘portfolio companies’, that are (collectively) shedding cash, has additionally been hived off. These, it later emerges, are up on the market. They embrace its Enterprise Campus Edge (ECE) division, which sells non-public 4G/5G options (and contributes RAN gross sales to its loss-making RAN enterprise, to be newly integrated with its profitable core-network software program and R&D ‘applied sciences’ models as a part of its new MI setup). Nokia has a management place in non-public ‘campus’ networks by way of its ECE division.
Following its CMD technique replace, Nokia’s share worth (which spiralled way-upwards after a $1 billion funding from Nvidia in late October) slumps by about 15 %.
Friday November 21: Nokia declares a $4 billion funding within the US, made “in collaboration with the Trump administration”. The deal is for R&D, plus manufacturing, targeted on “AI-ready” cell, mounted entry, IP, optical, and knowledge centre networking, it says. The announcement goes out at 4pm CET – whereas the US market remains to be open, and whereas European journalists are typically making ready to log out for the weekend. Howard Lutnick, US secretary of commerce, calls it “one other Trump administration win for America”.
Nokia has been requested for a remark concerning the timing, in addition to a few of the course of with affected employees in Europe.
Individually, and messing with the chronology, and probably the narrative…
Thursday November 18: a day earlier than Nokia declares (internally) it’s making cuts to its heritage R&D capabilities in France and Germany, and eight days earlier than it declares (externally) that it’s to speculate closely in new R&D capabilities within the US, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz attend a ‘summit on European digital sovereignty’ in Berlin to make Europe “extra reliant by itself expertise corporations” – and to “wean the bloc off American [tech]”.
As a footnote, we would, after all, word that Nokia’s job-cutting is a long-running saga, already. The agency mentioned final yr that it’ll axe between 9,000 and 14,000 jobs by the tip of 2026; the newest rounds, not communicated publicly, look solely like delivering on the upper finish of its authentic determine – equal to about 16 % of its whole workforce (round 86,000 workers, on the time). As others have reported, Nokia had greater than 100,000 employees as lately as 2018.
Neither is Nokia the one one in telecoms that’s slicing jobs, after all. US operator Verizon has mentioned it’ll axe 15,000 employees, the most important single-round discount within the firm’s historical past; a few of these will go in its Verizon Enterprise and 5G Acceleration groups, reckon different studies. Cellular operators, specifically, are shedding jobs. There are many different examples, simply discovered. In the meantime, Nokia’s nice rival Ericsson, the opposite aristocrat of European telecoms, mentioned in February final yr that it’ll lower 8,5000 employees, equal to round eight % of its international workforce.
Furthermore, Nokia is just not the one one going west – if, certainly, that’s its final technique for its cell networks enterprise. Ericsson can also be making vital state-side investments, together with $150 million in a producing facility in Lewisville, in Texas. The positioning, known as USA 5G Sensible Manufacturing unit, is squarely pitched at appeasing the US push on home-grown telecoms programs. “Merchandise are Made within the USA,” and compliant with the nation’s Construct America Purchase America Act (BABAA), declares a press word, issued final yr. Ericsson’s enterprise wi-fi staff, grown out of its acquisition of US agency Cradlepoint in late 2020, can also be principally US-based.
Nokia has earlier, too. It launched a devoted enterprise unit within the US final yr to ship non-public mobile, edge computing, and different options to the federal authorities. The brand new unit, known as Nokia Federal Options, is “bolstered” by its acquisition of US-based integrator Fenix Group, billed as a non-public 5G specialist within the protection sector. The sub-plot, once more, is about sovereign tech in mission-critical nationwide infrastructure. Satirically, maybe, the Finnish agency has mentioned to its inside groups, not less than, that it’s quitting the mission-critical non-public 5G sport – not less than as far as integration-heavy campus-style deployments go.
There will probably be different, most likely higher, examples of each agency’s US migration.
However one other factor, as somebody astutely mentioned to RCR Wi-fi this week: there’s an opposite-ways narrative as effectively, as US cloud hyperscalers go east to appease European sovereignty guidelines. The speed of appeasement has clearly accelerated over the previous couple of years – displaying a shift from conventional ‘EU-hosted areas’ to full sovereign-cloud fashions with EU-based governance.
In Might 2024, AWS introduced a €7.8 billion deal to create a ‘European sovereign cloud’, with its first area set to launch in Germany by the tip of 2025; by June, it had already established an EU-based company construction to function it. Google opened its first ‘sovereign cloud hub’ in Munich in November (2025), backed by an extra €5.5 billion funding to increase its knowledge centre footprint in Germany. Oracle can also be increasing its ‘EU sovereign cloud’ with new areas all through 2025.
So Nokia’s westwards migration could be clearly seen within the context of broader business pressures and geopolitics. On the similar time, its timing seems to be means off, once more, and the temper within the camp, not less than in its mainland-European heartlands in Germany and France, is just not good, by all accounts. Be a part of the dots, and greater questions could be requested about its future as a stalwart of European telecoms, maybe.
