By Ebube Jones
Publication Date: 2026-05-17 15:00:00
Businessman pointing arrow graph corporate future growth by Marchmeena29 via iStock
Networking stocks got a serious boost this week after Cisco (CSCO) put up a strong fiscal Q3 2026 report. On May 13, the company posted networking revenue of $8.82 billion, up 25%, thanks to heavy spending on AI infrastructure and campus networking gear.
The market liked what it saw. Cisco shares jumped between 18% and 22% in after-hours trading, and that enthusiasm spread quickly across the sector. Nokia (NOK) climbed more than 10%, which is notable because the company is starting to shake off its old image as just a legacy telecom business.
This wasn’t just traders piling into anything networking-related. AI buildouts are picking up speed, with major cloud companies planning to spend hundreds of billions in 2026 to handle larger training clusters and inference workloads.
So here’s the real question. If Cisco’s results show that networking demand is heating up again, does Nokia have what…
