Europe missed out on building the AI labs, and is quietly cashing in anyway. The continent’s established tech and industrial giants have emerged as unexpected winners of the AI boom, according to Reuters, even as its startups struggle to rival OpenAI or Google.
The pattern is a lesson in where the money actually lands. Frontier models grab the headlines, but the profits also flow to the companies that make the tools, run the software, and wire the power, and Europe is unusually strong in all three.
The clearest case is ASML, the Dutch firm whose lithography machines are the only way to make the most advanced AI chips, and which has been closing on a trillion-dollar valuation as demand surges.
Enterprise software is the other engine. SAP, now among Europe’s most valuable companies, sells the systems that big firms are wiring AI into, and every AI feature it adds is one more reason for customers to stay.
Then there is the unglamorous business of power and metal. Siemens has raised its outlook on AI-driven data-centre demand, and electrical firms such as Schneider and Prysmian are riding the buildout that every data centre requires.
