Nokia CEO: Data centers could be built ‘2x faster’ without supply bottlenecks

The tech industry would build data centers twice as fast without the supply constraints they face, the CEO of Nokia (NOK) told CNBC, underscoring continued demand for AI even as top executives debate slowing down the pace of development.

“I don’t think you can say in any manner we’re overbuilding today because reality is that if we could build 2x faster, our customers could build 2x faster, they probably would,” Justin Hotard said. “So that gives me confidence that we’re still in the early days” of the AI buildout, Hotard added.

Nokia, one of the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment makers, has pivoted to become a key player within the AI infrastructure space. Its growing role as a “picks and shovels” player in the AI boom appears to have won over investors, with the stock up around 130% over the past year.

Investments in the AI buildout from data centers to chips and related infrastructure will total $10.3 trillion from 2025 to 2032 — an average of 3.63% of U.S. gross domestic product per year, according to research presented at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.

Hotard said that demand for AI is not just predicated on frontier labs like Anthropic and OpenAI releasing new models.

“I think the reality is that we’re even where we are today is so early in the deployment, and the power of these models is so massive that there’s a lot of there’s a lot of demand to run in just deploying,” Hotard said.

“Even if we didn’t have another frontier model released in the next three years, we could probably make tremendous progress just deploying the technology that’s there today.”