Nokia CEO says AI investments won't slow down because it's a 'super cycle' with 'massive' prospects

Nokia CEO Justin Hotard says AI investments are unlikely to slow down because the technology is in the middle of a "super cycle."

Hotard spoke to CNBC on Thursday and was asked about the outlook for AI investments.

"I think this is a secular growth trend for many years," Hotard said. "The reason I say that is if you look at what we are doing in AI today, we are largely using LLMs for language-based applications."

"Autonomous vehicles are still in the early days of penetration. Augmented and virtual reality, smart glasses. Very low penetration. Robotics. Very low penetration. There's so many applications to come that I think we are very much in the early days," he continued.

Hotard took over as Nokia's president and CEO in April. Before Nokia, he was the executive vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center & AI Group.

Hotard told CNBC on Thursday that AI had created a "tremendous demand around the network buildout." He added that people take a short-term view when describing AI as a bubble.

"Yes, we had a bubble in the internet, but even if you look at that over a two, or three, or five-year period, you see that bubble burst, and then you see tremendous growth well above where the bubble was," he said.

"It's hard for me to predict what exactly will happen in AI on a quarter or one-year basis, but I think the long-term prospects are massive," he added.

Representatives for Hotard at Nokia did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Meta's former president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said in an interview with CNBC on October 15 that AI has "certainly got some pretty prominent features of what looks like a bubble."

Clegg was the UK's deputy prime minister from 2010 to 2015. He joined Meta in 2018 and left the social media giant in January.

"There's just an absolute sort of spasm of almost daily, hourly, dealmaking. Of course, you have got to kind of think, 'Oh wow, this could be headed for a correction," Clegg said of investments in AI.

Tech companies have been pouring billions of dollars into their AI investments. In September, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company would spend at least $600 billion on US data centers and infrastructure through 2028.

Zuckerberg told the "Access" podcast in an episode that aired on September 18 that while an AI bubble is "quite possible," he would rather err on the side of caution and over-invest instead of under-invest.

"If we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously. But what I'd say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side," he said.

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