If artificial intelligence is indeed a bubble, it’s been inflating a lot of companies in places well beyond the tech-bro heartlands of the US. Europe might be an AI laggard, but some of its grand old industrial names have been riding the boom as merrily as an Nvidia Corp. shareholder (at least before this week’s so far minor market correction.)
The AI race for virtual godhood has been running into human-scale bottlenecks such as land, labor and electricity. And Europe’s unsexy industrial champions including France’s Legrand SA and Schneider Electric SE (both founded in the 1800s) have been eagerly offering the picks and shovels for the data-center gold rush. Think server racks, heat-dissipating coolers, power-management tools and all the other stuff that’s essential to a spending splurge that might add up to $7 trillion by 2030. Along with Germany’s Siemens AG and Switzerland’s ABB Ltd., Europe has its own “Data Center Four” that’s being pump primed by the Magnificent Seven.