European industrial stocks rallied on Trump’s AI investment push

By Alessandro Parodi and Dominic Paton

MILAN/PARIS (Reuters) – European industrial shares such as Schneider Electric and Prysmian rose on Wednesday as traders warmed to U.S. trade after Donald Trump announced a new artificial intelligence (AI) investment push.

The US president on Tuesday announced up to $500 billion in private sector investment to support AI infrastructure, sparking a wave of stock buybacks to help build and connect the architecture behind this new technology.

Many of these stocks have reached record highs.

French group Schneider Electric, the supplier of electrical equipment and other infrastructure behind data centers, rose 3.4 percent to a new all-time high in Paris.

The French group recently bought Motivair, a US specialist in liquid cooling solutions for data centers, and is working with Nivea to develop cooling systems.

Italian cable maker Prysmia, which bought U.S. Encore Wire last year and is looking for potential M&A in data center assets in the U.S., hit a lifetime high of 3.3%.

Under Stargate’s initiative, the partnership between ChatGPT creator OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and other equity backers will initially deploy $100 billion. The rest is expected to take place over the next four years.

A Prysmian spokesperson said the investments would have an impact on the power grid beyond the direct impact on their industrial and construction operations.

Shares in other companies such as Germany’s Siemens Energy and ABB, which supply electrical hardware for AI infrastructure, rose 7.5% and 3.1% to historic highs.

“These companies are part of investment baskets focused on electrification, data centers and power transport infrastructure, which benefit from emerging trends in AI, electric vehicles and more,” said Angelo Meda, head of equities at Milan-based Banor SIM. “In Europe, which lacks technology giants, these shares are the way to tap into these trends.”

Europe’s broadest STOXX 600 index was broadly unchanged.

Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, investment in AI has increased, as companies across industries have sought to integrate artificial intelligence into their products and services.

(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi and Dominic Paton; Writing by Danilo Massoni; Editing by Amanda Cooper)