Beyond Nvidia: Europe's best-performing AI stocks of 2026

For most investors, Nvidia, along with Micron, AMD, and Broadcom, has become the face of the artificial-intelligence boom, but the AI supply chain stretches far beyond Silicon Valley.

Across Europe, a group of largely overlooked companies supplying critical hardware for AI data centres have emerged as some of the biggest stock-market winners of 2026.

Europe's AI potential

Europe may not have produced an AI champion on the scale of Nvidia, Microsoft or OpenAI. Instead, it is home to a growing ecosystem of companies supplying the infrastructure that makes artificial intelligence possible: the lasers that move data between GPUs, the substrates that connect advanced chips, the servers that train models and the testing equipment that validates processors before they leave the factory.

As spending on AI data centres accelerates, these companies have quietly become some of the world's biggest stock-market winners. Several shares have climbed by hundreds of percent this year, while one has surged more than 2,200%.

Not all of these gains are supported by current earnings. Several companies remain loss-making, while others are trading on expectations of future AI demand rather than present revenues. Investors are effectively betting that AI infrastructure spending will continue to expand rapidly.

The ranking below highlights the 10 European AI-linked stocks that have delivered the strongest gains so far in 2026.

Therankings are based on year-to-date share-price performance. Companies were included if a significant part of their investment case is linked to AI infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing, photonics, networking, servers or related technologies. Stocks with insufficient liquidity were excluded.

10. Nokia: the comeback as an AI-networking play

Nokia Oyj is up 159.51% year to date. Most people still picture the phones it sold off more than a decade ago, but today the Finnish group makes optical-transport and IP-networking gear — and that has become a chokepoint in AI data centres, where vast volumes of data move between racks over fibre.

The turning point was strategic validation: in October 2025, Nvidia took a $1bn (€0.87bn) equity stake tied to a jointly developed partnership.

In the first quarter of 2026, Nokia's net sales rose 4% to €4.5bn, but net sales to AI and cloud customers jumped 49% year on year and now account for about 8% of the group, with €1bn of new AI and cloud orders booked in the quarter.

Optical Networks grew 20%, and management raised its full-year guidance for network infrastructure to 12%–14% growth.

9. ams-OSRAM: a lighting maker reinvented around AI photonics

The Austrian-German company ams-OSRAM AG has surged 175% in 2026 as investors embrace its pivot toward AI-driven photonics.

The group develops advanced sensors, imaging and optical technologies that enable machines to see and interact with the physical world.

In May, it signed a development agreement with a leading AI photonics customer to commercialise optical interconnects for AI data centres, while also expanding into components for AI-powered smart glasses.

The turnaround is gaining traction: first-quarter 2026 semiconductor revenue rose 9% year on year, reinforcing confidence in the company's growing role in the AI infrastructure ecosystem.

8. Technoprobe: testing the chips that power AI

The Italian firm Technoprobe S.p.A. is up 184.26% in 2026. The company is the world leader in probe cards — the precision interfaces that test chips before they ship — and counts the kind of processors made by Nvidia and AMD among the silicon it checks.

Demand for AI testing has driven the rerating.

Full-year 2025 revenue rose 16% to €628m, the first half of 2025 grew 35%, and the company reported a record first quarter of 2026 of about €187m, up 19% year on year, pulling its three-year targets forward by a full year.

Bank of America upgraded the stock to a buy in May, citing earnings growth tied to graphics processors.

7. Raspberry Pi Holdings: the edge-AI favourite or a meme-stock?

Cambridge-based Raspberry Pi Holdings plc has risen 198.63%. The company sells the low-cost single-board computers beloved by hobbyists and, increasingly, used in industry and edge computing.

Its run has been driven by a mix of genuine edge-AI demand — its semiconductor chips now outsell its boards — and a social-media frenzy over running AI agents on cheap, always-on machines.

In 2025, revenue rose 25% to $323.2mn (€281mn), pre-tax profit climbed 63% to $26.5mn (€23mn), while Jefferies lifted its 2026 revenue forecast 42% to $511mn (€445mn).

Several analysts have warned that the move carries meme-stock characteristics, with the shares trading near 50 times forward earnings.

6. STMicroelectronics: the giant turning towards the data centre

STMicroelectronics is up 204.28% in 2026 and is by far the largest company on the list. The Swiss-headquartered semiconductor group makes power chips, microcontrollers and sensors, and is pushing into the optical products that link AI servers.

The catalyst is a data-centre pivot. In February, it agreed a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar deal with Amazon Web Services to supply compute infrastructure for cloud and AI, and it expects data-centre revenue well above $500mn (€435mn) in 2026 and beyond $1bn (€0.87bn) in 2027.

Analysts have become increasingly optimistic about the company's AI prospects. UBS raised its price target on the stock to €80 from €49 while maintaining a buy rating, citing growth opportunities in photonics, AI power technologies and satellite applications.

Following a difficult 2025, when revenue fell about 11% to roughly $11.8bn (€10.3bn), first-quarter 2026 net revenues rose 23% to $3.10bn (€2.70bn) — with radio-frequency and optical communications up 34% — and it guided second-quarter revenue up about 25% year on year.

5. AIXTRON: the picks-and-shovels name running ahead of its sales

German AIXTRON SE has gained 234.70%. The company builds the deposition machines used to grow the compound semiconductor layers behind lasers and optical components — equipment the photonics boom needs.

A bullish read-across from US chipmaker Marvell helped lift the shares to their highest level in more than two decades.

But this is possibly a clear case of price outrunning fundamentals: first-quarter 2026 revenue fell 47% year on year as orders stayed weak, even with a backlog near €359m and a 2026 revenue target of about €560m.

Berenberg cut the stock to hold with a €42 target, arguing the optics story was already in the price.

4. AT&S: the substrates that carry AI chips

AT&S Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik AG has risen 366.46%. The Austrian firm makes high-end printed circuit boards and the IC substrates that connect advanced processors to the rest of a system — an unglamorous but essential layer of the AI hardware stack.

It is ramping dedicated substrate capacity in China under long-term customer deals.

Revenue rose 21% to €1.8bn in its 2025/26 financial year, which ended in March, and the group guides for 30%–35% revenue growth as AI orders build.

However, it suspended its dividend and is leaning on new debt to fund the expansion.

3. 2CRSi: the French server maker building 'AI factories'

Strasbourg-based 2CRSi S.A. has surged 410.03%. The company designs energy-efficient servers and cooling systems — including immersion and direct liquid cooling — for AI and high-performance computing.

A run of large AI contracts has transformed it. It is delivering an "AI factory" packed with thousands of Nvidia Blackwell processors under a multi-year US master contract worth up to $610mn (€531mn).

This is where revenue growth is most explosive: full-year 2024/25 revenue rose 31% to €220.8m, then first-half 2025/26 revenue jumped to €204.7m — almost ten times the year-earlier figure — and the company raised its full-year target above €400m, with an ambition towards €1bn the year after.

2. Soitec: paying for the AI slice, not the shrinking whole

French Soitec SA is up 559.98%. The firm makes engineered semiconductor wafers, including the silicon-on-insulator and photonics materials that sit beneath optical chips, after years in which its shares lost most of their value.

The rebound is built on photonics for AI data centres.

The contrast in the accounts is stark: total revenue actually fell 34% to €592mn in its 2026 financial year as older mobile and automotive lines corrected, yet its Edge and Cloud AI revenue reached €214mn, and its Photonics-SOI line crossed $100mn (€87mn) for the first time, earlier than planned.

Investors are paying for the fast-growing AI part, not the shrinking total.

1. Sivers Semiconductors: the laser maker that became Europe's best-performing AI stock

Swedish Sivers Semiconductors AB is up 2,245.93%, the best-performing stock in Europe this year. The company makes the tiny laser arrays and optical engines that move data as light inside AI data centres, alongside wireless chips.

The move that crowned it came on 2 June, when it agreed to fold its lasers into GlobalFoundries' silicon-photonics platform, aimed at the co-packaged optics that link large AI clusters. The stock rallied 60% on the session.

The gap between price and fundamentals is widest here. Full-year 2025 revenue was about 361 million Swedish kronor, up 33%, but the company is loss-making — it reported a net loss of roughly 187 million kronor — and first-quarter 2026 revenue actually fell about 22%.

What Europe's AI winners have in common

What investors are buying is the order pipeline, which Sivers says grew 77% to more than $530mn (€461mn), and the promise of a photonics ramp still to come.

The common thread linking Europe's biggest AI winners is that none are household names. Rather than competing directly with Nvidia, Microsoft or Amazon, they occupy specialised niches within the global AI supply chain.

Whether these gains prove sustainable will depend on how quickly AI infrastructure spending translates into revenue and profits. But for now, Europe's most successful AI stocks are not the companies building artificial intelligence — they are the companies enabling it.

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