AI boom driving earnings growth for Europe's biggest industrial companies
The artificial-intelligence boom is giving some of Europe’s biggest industrial companies a welcome lift as they weather weaker manufacturing demand from Asia to North America.
ABB Ltd, Siemens AG, Legrand SA and Schneider Electric SE have seen a surge in orders for data-center infrastructure — server racks, electrical equipment and cooling technologies — that enable AI giants like Nvidia Corp. to build faster and more efficient computing models.
Data center revenues for the six biggest electrical firms reached €20 billion ($22.2 billion) last year, double what they were five years earlier, according to Redburn Atlantic analyst James Moore. He predicts sales to grow around 15% on average through 2027 for those companies, including US peers Vertiv Holdings Co. and Eaton Corp Plc.
“The AI gold rush is nothing that I have seen in the last 20 years in the data center industry,” Pankaj Sharma, executive vice president of the secure power division at Schneider Electric, said in an interview. The division provides both the hardware and supporting software for data centers.
