Hotard says AI and cloud connectivity demand is massive and insatiable, because constrained compute makes connectivity a way to maximize compute utilization.

Despite a lot of the sentiment in the market, the demand for connectivity in AI and cloud is massive and it's insatiable. And it's driven by the fact that if compute is constrained, connectivity becomes another way to maximize the access to the assets or the utilization of the compute assets.

Hotard expects Nokia's optical and IP networks to grow 25%-30% combined in 2027 on strong market demand.

For 2027, we now expect these businesses to grow between 25% and 30% on a combined basis, reflecting the strength of the underlying market and our position to capture that demand.

Hotard warns that AI-driven supply chain constraints are broad-based and bring structural cost increases across leading-edge nodes, memory and materials.

This is much more broad-based, touches all the leading-edge nodes, touches memory, also touches some of the sourced materials, PCBs, et cetera. And it's not just a shortage. It's also a structural cost increase that we're seeing in the supply chain.

Hotard sees no imminent investment cycle in the telecom market, expecting it to stay flat while pricing rises on cost inflation.

I don't see an imminent investment cycle. I think the market continues to be flat as we look ahead, and we've been pretty vocal and transparent about this. However, we expect -- given the cost inflation, we expect pricing to go up.

Hotard argues distributed, localized AI demand creates more data centers in more places, needing more optical and IP connectivity.

With demand for intelligence becoming more distributed and localized, this creates more data centers in more locations, which requires more connectivity to deliver services with the latency, performance, security and locality demanded by AI workloads.