May 18, 2026
Midco, Switch Announce Historic 400G Connectivity Deal

Midco and Switch are proud to announce a five-year, multistate connectivity agreement supporting critical AI infrastructure in Ellendale, North Dakota.
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A New Benchmark in Network Capacity

The agreement includes more than 500 individual 400 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) circuits delivered across two geographically diverse routes, providing full path redundancy between Ellendale, ND and Chicago, IL. In total, the network enables 200 terabits of capacity.
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(Switch SVP of Connectivity, Scott Gutierrez):

"[...] This network solution with Nokia was critical. Without it, the customer would not have been positioned to secure a multi-billion-dollar contract. Midco played an integral role as a nimble and innovative partner, collaborating closely with Switch to design and deploy the infrastructure required to meet the moment."
[...]

"We’re proud to support Midco in delivering a highly advanced 400G network,” said Osvaldo Di Campli, EVP Network Infrastructure Sales at Nokia. “This project highlights how next-generation optical innovation is scaling to unlock massive capacity while maintaining performance and resiliency at scale to meet the demands of the AI supercycle."

Nokia launched its AI Networking Innovation Lab to help build and test faster, more reliable data center networks for large-scale AI workloads.

The lab works with major AI and cloud partners to validate real-world AI networking designs and develop next-generation infrastructure for AI.

Early partners include AMD, Keysight Technologies, Lenovo, Supermicro, and WEKA.

I listened to Nvidia’s earning call and wanted to share my observations. They made clear during the call that:

“Every single base station, every single radio network would become an AI-powered radio network.”

And also said

“NVIDIA CUDA extends all the way to the edge… AI RAN telco base stations.”

This is basically the core thesis behind: AI-RAN, programmable telecom infrastructure, GPU-accelerated networks, and telecom networks evolving into AI compute infrastructure

That lines up nicely with how Nokia has been positioning itself.

Nvidia seems to be signaling that telecom infrastructure won’t just carry AI traffic, it becomes part of the AI compute layer itself.

If that vision plays out, it’s a major tailwind for telecom vendors trying to turn networks into programmable AI platforms rather than just connectivity providers.

I think the biggest aha moments to me was that their new reporting segmentation. Companies segment when they want investors to model the business differently, and if they believe future growth shifts structurally. Jensen explicitly said “We wanted you to understand our business better.”. Nvidia is going to report Edge / physical AI separately and that’s a good signal for Nokia

"Meanwhile the market still prices $NOK at 3.2x forward EV/Revenue. Ciena trades at 12.7x. Coherent trades at 9.5x." (Source: post by Michael Sikand)

If we assign a multiple of 10x to Nokia’s Optical and IP Networks businesses and a multiple of 1.5x to the rest of Nokia based on last year's realized figures, it implies a valuation of €56.1 billion for the former part and €21.4 billion for the latter, slow-growing part. When these figures are summed up and divided by the total number of shares, we arrive at a per-share value of €13.5 or $15.7.

Now remember that I used 2025 sales figures with still modest AI & Cloud exposure and that strong AI-related growth is expected for Optical and IP Networks. The $15.7 valuation could eventually prove very conservative once the much larger sales figures of 2027–2028 start materializing.

I’m buying in after earnings tomorrow. Let’s be real, I haven’t seen a single person bearish on NOK. You know what that means 😈

1) Investor Michael Sikand on why the hype on Nokia is real

Oh captain, my captain. Everyone is talking about $NOK on this dip. No one is talking about the key man. A few weeks ago, $NOK CEO Justin Hotard bought ~$1.2M his own stock on the open market at an ATH. But that's not what's so interesting to me.

$NOK brought in a data center executive to lead a telecom business. And there's something wild he said on the last ER. Before Nokia, Hotard ran Intel's Data Center & AI Group. Prior to that, 8.5 years running HPE's High Performance Computing & AI business. In 13 months, Hotard has transformed Nokia.

- Closed the $2.3B Infinera deal, turning Nokia from a third party optics reseller into a vertically integrated photonics company with its own InP chip stack.

- Walked into Jensen Huang's HQ and walked out with a $1B Nvidia investment at $6.01 to turn cell towers into edge compute.

- Redirected ~€300M of annual R&D away from custom baseband silicon into optical software and SR Linux.

Then he put 7 figures of his own money in at the highs. Meanwhile the market still prices $NOK at 3.2x forward EV/Revenue. Ciena trades at 12.7x. Coherent trades at 9.5x. In the most recent ER, Justin said something not a single analyst followed up on. "...a big milestone later this year with NVIDIA."

u/KawzInvests and I just wrote one of the best investment research reports we've ever made. In fact, it was one of the most interesting valuation exercises we've ever done, applying a sum of the parts POV attributing different multiples to different segments to understand what this giant is really worth. If you've been seeing the hype on $NOK, it's real. This is still an undervalued business still in the middle of its AI re-rate. If you want the full story and the exact options contracts me and u/KawzInvests are loading here. Our $NOK deep dive is out now on Substack.

2) KawzInvests on the appointment of David Heard to the board of Penguin Solutions (PENG)

The president of $NOK Network Infrastructure division just joined the board of $PENG. INSANE Now look at the rest of that board.

> Penny Herscher, who also chairs on $LITE

> Mark Papermaster, the sitting CTO of $AMD

> Ian Colle, who ran Advanced Computing at $AMZN

> And now David Heard former CEO of infinera now at $NOK

David Heard's resume before Nokia is the part that matters most. He was CEO of Infinera, the photonic chip company Nokia bought for $2.3B. Before that JDS Uniphase, Lucent, AT&T. Four decades inside optical networking. That Infinera deal turned Nokia from a reseller of someone else's photonics into a vertically integrated optical company with its own chips. Optical Networks grew 20% year over year in Q1 2026 and management raised Network Infrastructure guidance from 6 to 8% to 12 to 14%. So the man who built Nokia's optical business now sits across from the chair of Lumentum and the CTO of AMD on the same nine person board.

*****

KawzInvests (also known as Kawz Research) is a pseudonym used by an anonymous financial analyst and researcher. They primarily publish in-depth technology, semiconductor, and AI infrastructure research on X (formerly Twitter) and frequently co-author investment reports on Substack alongside media entrepreneur and investor Michael Sikand.

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The entire market appears to be holding its breath pending NVDAs guidance.

We joke that the market would crash if NVDA misses, but NVDAs performance delaying a market wide dip has always been the case.

Goodluck all, I’m sure optical will be revolutionary to the revolution.

🍻

I'm considering entry into the stock but with the current price, it seems a bit expensive. What would a good price be to enter and what's the consensus on tagret price in the future?