AI frenzy sees these European stocks gain over 100% this year in blockbuster rally

The AI boom is dominated by companies from the U.S. and China, but a handful of European tech stocks have soared this year as investors pile money into the companies building the infrastructure needed to power the tech.

Chipmaking equipment company Aixtron has risen 189% year-to-date. Technoprobe, which also makes equipment used in the chipmaking process, has rallied 129% and chipmaker STMicroelectronics 133% in 2026.

Nokia, a legacy phonemaker that has shifted its focus to AI, has seen its stock jump 108% this year.

In recent years, U.S. and Chinese companies have been the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom as they lead the way on frontier models and the most powerful processing chips.

But, as compute demand rises, investors are broadening out to "enablers" like companies developing data centers, networking and chip equipment, alongside power, cooling and software tools, expanding the drive to snap up European stocks, Fabio Bassi, head of cross-asset strategy at J.P. Morgan, told CNBC.

"In Europe, scarcity amplifies the trend," he said. "There are few large, liquid AI pure-plays, so flows concentrate in a small group of perceived AI proxies, combining real AI-linked demand with crowded positioning."

Germany's Aixtron, which designs and manufactures advanced equipment that is used to apply ultra-thin layers of materials onto silicon wafers, known as deposition, has seen its stock rocket more than 300% in the past 12 months. It's the second biggest mover on the Stoxx 600 in that time, behind pharma company Abivax.

Citi hiked the target price of Aixtron by more than 66% in an April note, on the basis that the company is seeing stronger demand and margins. AI is the primary revenue driver of Aixtron's 2026 guidance, Citi said.

"The [AI] buildout is consuming semiconductors of all types, which bodes well for STMicroelectronics and its peers," Brian Colello, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, told CNBC.

STMicroelectronics has exposure to AI via two avenues: power semiconductors going into the upcoming 800-volt power transition — an industry-wide shift from traditional lower-voltage architectures to more efficient systems, and a move to optical products for faster data center connectivity, Colello said.

Once a world-leading cellphone maker, Nokia is reinventing itself as a provider of key hardware used in AI infrastructure. The company provides networks used by AI data centers, as well as optical equipment.

Nokia completed its acquistion of Infinera early last year, making it one of the largest vendors of optical networking equipment in the world. Nvidia announced it would purchase $1 billion in shares in Nokia in October, boosting the stock 22% at the time.

Italy's Technoprobe makes probe cards, which are electromechanical interfaces used for testing silicon wafers. In May, the Bank of America upgraded the company to a buy rating as it predicts that the company's earnings will grow over the next few years on demand linked to graphics processing units (GPUs).

The Stoxx Europe Total Market Semiconductor index has risen 84% so far this year, compared to just a 3% increase on the Stoxx 600.

Stoxx 600 year-to-date.

While AI winners have so far been the companies supplying the infrastructure involved in the buildout, down the line, firms deploying AI will likely begin to make big gains.

"These might be firms in software, fintech, healthcare, robotics," said Colello. "Since every nation will want to deploy AI in their native languages, we suspect there will be local AI winners in each region of the world."

A rally in a handful of European stocks alone is not enough to signal an impending boom in the region's lagging AI sector, analysts told CNBC.

Regulatory hurdles in Europe will likely mean a slower rollout of AI infrastructure, said Martin Szumski, equity analyst at Morningstar. "There is growing interest in supporting AI infrastructure in Europe, of which Nokia can play a part, but it will likely happen under a fundamentally different regulatory framework than in the US."

He pointed to power grid constraints, data center moratoriums and compliance with the EU AI Act as hindering the AI buildout in Europe.

"There are simply fewer places [than in the U.S.] where you can buy 500+ acres of land with the needed power and water availability to support an AI-enabled data centre," Szumski added. "For the time being, the winners of the AI trade are still those companies selling into the US."

It's still too early to read recent moves as proof that AI will be a broad, durable driver of European growth or equity performance, said Bassi.

The takeaway of the rally of select European AI stocks is "not a broad European tech renaissance," he told CNBC. Instead, he added, it's a "narrow transmission channel" into select European companies with real exposure to data centre expansion and the ability to turn demand into earnings.