The UK’s fusty FTSE 100 will finally get some AI-related excitement this week, albeit in a surprisingly old-school form. Computacenter, a 44-year-old hardware reseller based in leafy Hertfordshire, is likely to be confirmed as a new entrant to the benchmark index, its growth turbocharged by orders to outfit data centres for US tech giants.
Computacenter supplies the sort of dull-but-essential tools that AI superpowers need to build their massive investment projects, like cooling equipment and miles upon miles of cabling. Clients have included Tesla, Facebook owner Meta Platforms and xAI, which forms part of Elon Musk’s soon-to-go-public SpaceX. Strong demand from hyperscalers has helped push up Computacenter’s stock by 50 per cent so far this year.
The rally is more than pure speculative frenzy: Computacenter’s revenue jumped 32 per cent in 2025 to £9.2bn, helping it return to operating profit growth after a 9 per cent decline the previous year. It is also a surprising second wind for a company that has been around for nearly 45 years. Its chief executive, Mike Norris, is the longest-serving CEO in the FTSE 350.
As to how sustainable all that demand is, a focus on large contracts tends to make Computacenter’s finances a little unpredictable, resulting in a volatile share price. Analysts cautiously pencil in a 14 per cent revenue increase this year but only single-digit annual growth thereafter, according to Visible Alpha. If US groups lift capital expenditure higher, as they tend to every quarter, or if investment in Europe accelerates, that could prove conservative.
