The AI boom is being led by companies in the U.S. and China, but some European tech stocks have soared this year as investors poured money into companies building the infrastructure needed to power the technology.
Chip manufacturing equipment company extron It’s up 189% since the beginning of the year. techno probeThe company, which also makes equipment used in the chip-making process, rose 129% in 2026, while chipmaker STMicroelectronics rose 133%.
nokiais a traditional mobile phone maker that has shifted its focus to AI, and its stock is up 108% this year.
In recent years, US and Chinese companies have been the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom, leading with frontier models and the most powerful processing chips.
But as demand for computing grows, investors are branching out into “enablers” such as power, cooling and software tools, as well as companies developing data centers, networking and chip equipment, adding to the momentum driving European stocks higher, Fabio Bassi, head of cross-asset strategy at JPMorgan, told CNBC.
“In Europe, scarcity is amplifying that trend,” he says. “Since there are few pure plays of large-scale, fluid AI, flows are concentrated in a small group of recognized AI proxies, combined with real AI-linked demand and congested positioning.”
boom time
Germany’s Ixtron, which designs and manufactures advanced equipment used to apply ultra-thin layers of materials onto silicon wafers (known as vapor deposition), has seen its stock price soar more than 300% in the past 12 months. It is the second largest movement in the world. Stocks 600 At the time, it was behind the pharmaceutical company Avivax.
Citi raised its price target on Extron by more than 66% in an April note, citing the company’s strong demand and earnings. AI is a key revenue driver for Extron’s 2026 outlook, according to Citi.
“(AI) ramp-up is consuming all types of semiconductors, which bodes well for STMicroelectronics and its peers,” Morningstar senior equity analyst Brian Colello told CNBC.
STMicroelectronics is approaching AI in two ways. One is the upcoming transition to 800-volt power supplies, power semiconductors for an industry-wide shift from traditional low-voltage architectures to more efficient systems, and optical products for faster data center connectivity, Colello said.
Once the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia is reinventing itself as a leading provider of hardware used in AI infrastructure. The company provides networks and optical equipment used in AI data centers.
Nokia completed its acquisition of Infinera early last year, making it one of the world’s largest optical networking equipment vendors. Nvidia announced in October that it would buy Nokia stock for $1 billion, sending the stock price up 22% at the time.
Italy’s Technoprobe manufactures probe cards, which are electromechanical interfaces used to test silicon wafers. In May, Bank of America upgraded the company’s rating to “buy,” saying it expects the company’s revenue to grow over the next few years due to demand related to graphics processing units (GPUs).
The Stoxx Europe Total Market Semiconductor index is up 84% since the beginning of the year, while the Stoxx 600 index is up just 3%.
Stoxx Since the beginning of 600 years.
So far, the winners in AI have been the companies that provide the infrastructure involved in building it, but in the future, companies that deploy AI may start to reap big profits.
“These could be software, fintech, healthcare, robotics companies,” Colello said. “Every country wants to implement AI in its native language, so we think there will be local AI winners in each region of the world.”
late
Analysts told CNBC that the rally in some European stocks is not enough to signal an imminent boom in the region’s lagging AI sector.
Morningstar equity analyst Martin Zumski said regulatory hurdles in Europe are likely to slow the rollout of AI infrastructure. “There is a growing interest in supporting AI infrastructure in Europe, and Nokia could play a part, but it would likely be under a fundamentally different regulatory framework than in the US.”
He pointed to power grid constraints, data center suspensions and compliance with EU AI laws as impediments to building AI in Europe.
“There are simply fewer places[than in the U.S.]where you can buy 500+ acres of land with access to the power and water needed to support an AI-enabled data center,” Shumsky added. “For the foreseeable future, the winners in the AI trade will continue to be the companies that sell to the US.”
Bassi said it was still too early to see recent developments as evidence that AI will be a widespread and durable driver of European growth and stock performance.
He told CNBC that the outcome of the rally in some European AI stocks is “not a broad European tech renaissance.” Rather, he added, it is a “narrow conduit” to selected European companies that actually have the ability to expand their data centers and turn demand into revenue.
