Many German companies are helping to build the AI ​​infrastructure

Artificial Intelligence How German companies are benefiting from the AI ​​boom As of: November 10, 2026 • 11:35 a.m

US tech giants are investing billions in artificial intelligence. Investors are becoming more cautious about costs. Why German and European companies could benefit from this.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been driving prices on the stock market for some time now - with its ups and downs. The mood on the financial markets is currently being compared to the great gold rush in the Wild West: everything seems possible. But while only a few gold diggers got rich back then, it was mainly the shovel manufacturers who made a fortune.

The situation is similar with regard to AI, says Christian Röhl from Scalable Capital. Many of today's shovel manufacturers are European companies. "Without, for example, ASML from the Netherlands or the German - unfortunately not listed - companies Carl Zeiss and Trumpf, TSCM in Taiwan would not be able to produce microchips for Nvidia. Europe is, so to speak, the backbone of the data center boom," said the market expert in an interview with the ARD financial editorial team.

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Above all, it is the large US tech companies that are investing incredible sums in the expansion of AI. The Flossbach von Storch Research Institute sees a wave of depreciation rolling towards companies.

The trillion-dollar AI investments are no longer just an announcement, but are rapidly changing the balance sheets of the so-called hyperscalers Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle, writes analyst Christof Schürmann. “The commitments made by the five tech companies for infrastructure are breathtakingly high and will be reflected in their balance sheets in the future.”

They are called hyperscalers because they invest far beyond the usual level with the aim of scaling future earnings from their businesses with AI offerings. According to the Flossbach von Storch Research Institute, this is happening at a pace that was hardly imaginable just a few years ago.

“Platform and software companies that were once relatively capital-poor are now turning into capital-intensive operators of infrastructures that incur high fixed costs.” The hyperscalers are therefore “the new heavy industry”.

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While investors are increasingly skeptical about the tech giants' billion-dollar investments, many companies are already making money from the expansion of AI infrastructure: be it as suppliers for data centers, power grid operators or chip suppliers.

There are numerous German and European companies among them, says expert Röhl from Scalable Capital. "For example, construction company Hochtief, very active in the USA, Siemens Energy with all power grid and energy solutions, but also Siemens itself, which with the digital factory creates the link between software and AI on the one hand and the physical world on the other."

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It is also worth taking a look at the MDAX if you are looking for German beneficiaries of the AI ​​boom, says investment strategist Stephan Kemper from BNP Paribas to the ARD financial editorial team. "In the MDAX we find many specialist manufacturers that produce parts or machines that are needed to produce semiconductors. Aixtron is one example, they manufacture systems to produce compound semiconductors and are therefore a structural profiteer."

Kemper even goes one step further: Without European companies and systems that can be used to build the semiconductors in the first place, there would not be an AI server running anywhere in the world. In addition to the large chip system manufacturer from the Netherlands, ASML, German companies such as Jenoptik supplied important components. This also includes the DAX group Infineon, whose chips originally come from the automotive sector.

"Infineon is now very important because their chips are successfully used in the area of ​​energy management. This is becoming increasingly important in data centers. Because the chips from Nvidia and Co. need a lot of energy," says investment strategist Kemper.

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The Munich chip manufacturer's latest quarterly figures also demonstrate its importance. Infineon earned significantly more in the past financial year: a profit of 1.51 billion euros after taxes means an increase of 49 percent compared to the previous year.

Data centers in particular have boosted Infineon's business - and should continue to do so. The group, based in Neubiberg near Munich, supplies power semiconductors for the power supply.

Expectations of future profits are enormous, writes analyst Pascal Kielkopf from asset manager HQ Trust. At the same time, uncertainty is growing as to when and to what extent the billions invested in the industry will actually pay off.

"After all, the major US technology companies are currently investing more money than ever before in the expansion of artificial intelligence. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft alone are expected to spend around 740 billion US dollars on high-performance chips, data centers and other infrastructure this year," says industry expert Kielkopf.

The recent sell-off on the Nasdaq following the Democrats' victory in the US midterm elections shows how sensitive the markets are now reacting to news surrounding the AI ​​investment boom. From the perspective of market expert Robert Halver from Baader Bank, this is also an argument for a greater weighting of German and European stocks.

"That could be an argument for the DAX that the large capital collection agencies say that AI is an attractive long-term industry, but at the moment we want to focus on the stocks from the economic sector, on mechanical engineering, suppliers that benefit from AI. So we have a certain sector rotation away from the new economy towards the old economy."

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Many analysts still believe that the gigantic investments in the expansion of artificial intelligence will pay off in the medium term. “The expectations for the end of the decade are correspondingly high,” writes analyst Pascal Kielkopf from HQ Trust.

“The additional income should come primarily from cloud services, AI applications and software licenses.” However, the costs of expanding the infrastructure are likely to remain immensely high.

This topic in the program: tagesschau.de | ARD stock exchange: Who benefits from the AI ​​boom in Germany | November 9, 2026 | 2:33 p.m