Europe's AI Equipment Sales to US Rise, But Market Share Slides

European exports of equipment feeding the US artificial intelligence build-out have risen strongly since 2022, yet Europe's share of total US imports of that equipment has roughly halved, falling from nearly 10 percent in early 2024 to about 5.7 percent by July 2026. That is the central finding of an analysis published on November 11, 2026, by Pablo Muylle, an economist at ING based in Belgium, writing for ING Economic and Financial Analysis.

The finding matters beyond trade statistics. The global AI infrastructure boom has become one of the largest capital expenditure waves of the decade, and the question of who supplies it determines where the industrial gains of the AI economy land. Muylle's earlier work for ING on AI and the global economy highlighted Europe's role as a supplier of some of the equipment behind that build-out. Europe is therefore not simply watching the US from the sidelines. The new numbers show, however, that its position inside the supply chain is weakening even as its sales grow.

What do the numbers show?

ING's analysis tracks a selected basket of US imports of AI-related infrastructure equipment. Within that basket, two opposing movements run side by side.

• European exports of equipment supporting the US AI build-out have risen strongly since 2022. Power and cooling suppliers have gained both sales and market share.
• Europe's share of overall US imports of AI-related equipment is falling, because computing hardware now takes a larger slice of the market — a category where European suppliers hold a smaller and declining share.
• Europe's share of US imports in the selected infrastructure basket initially climbed to nearly 10 percent in early 2024, then dropped to about 5.7 percent by July 2026.
• China's share of US imports in the same basket has fallen from around 20 percent in 2020 to below 5 percent at the latest observation.

The pattern is a story of composition, not of absolute decline. Europe is selling more. The market around it is growing faster, and it is growing precisely in the segments where Europe is weakest.

Why is Europe losing share while exports grow?

The answer lies in how the structure of US demand has shifted. Demand has moved toward computing and networking equipment, categories in which Europe is less competitive. That shift, Muylle reports, has reduced the European Union's aggregate share of US imports despite clear gains in other categories.

Power and cooling equipment is the bright spot. Data centers that run AI workloads consume enormous amounts of electricity and generate heat that must be managed, and European suppliers in these segments have converted the build-out into both higher sales and a larger slice of their market. ING's analysis identifies this as the one area where Europe's competitive position is strengthening rather than eroding.

Compute hardware and networking tell the opposite story. Here Europe's share is smaller and declining, and because computing is absorbing a growing portion of total US spending on AI infrastructure, the weakness in that single category drags down the aggregate European share even though the power and cooling business is winning.

The arithmetic is unforgiving. A supplier can post record export volumes, gain share in its strongest niches, and still watch its overall position shrink when the fastest-growing part of the market belongs to someone else.

What happened to China's position?

China's trajectory in the same basket is steeper. Its share of US imports of the selected AI-related equipment fell from roughly 20 percent in 2020 to below 5 percent at the latest reading, a decline of about three-quarters over six years.

ING attributes the change within the framework of its import-share analysis. For Europe, China's contraction has not translated into share gains in the categories now driving the market. The US import basket for AI infrastructure is being reallocated, but the beneficiaries sit mainly outside both Europe and China in the compute and networking segments where those two economies are least present.

Is Europe's own production rising?

Only in patches. Production increases are concentrated in a small number of countries — the Netherlands, Sweden, and Hungary — while overall EU output in the relevant categories remains below its levels of early 2022.

That detail sharpens the picture. The European companies exporting into the US AI build-out are clustered in specific national industrial bases, and their gains have not been broad enough to lift aggregate EU production past its pre-2022 mark. Export success in power and cooling, in other words, coexists with a manufacturing sector that is still smaller than it was before the boom accelerated.

Why does this matter for the AI economy?

The ING analysis frames a question that policymakers and investors in Europe have debated since the AI investment cycle began: whether Europe can capture meaningful industrial value from an AI boom whose capital spending is concentrated in the United States. The data published on November 11 gives a mixed answer.

Europe is not absent from the build-out. It supplies equipment that every data center needs — the power systems and the cooling machinery — and in those lines it is gaining ground. But the center of gravity of the market has moved toward computing and networking, the highest-value and fastest-growing categories, and there Europe's position is small and getting smaller. The result is a declining overall import share: nearly 10 percent in early 2024, about 5.7 percent by July 2026.

The comparison with China underlines how fast the map can be redrawn. A country that supplied a fifth of the selected US imports in 2020 now supplies less than a twentieth. Europe's decline is far gentler, but it runs in the same direction across the categories that are expanding.

For investors, the analysis also lands amid heavy interest in European exposure through the ticker lists attached to the piece, which range from ASML — the Dutch semiconductor equipment maker central to any compute supply-chain discussion — to broad European equity funds such as VGK, EZU and IEUR, and China-linked instruments such as FXI, MCHI and KWEB. ING's disclaimer states that the publication is not an investment recommendation and was prepared solely for information purposes.

The forward question is whether Europe's strength in power and cooling can hold as the build-out matures. Every additional megawatt of US AI computing capacity needs more of both, and that is the segment where European suppliers are already gaining share. But unless European producers crack compute and networking, ING's numbers suggest, sales will keep rising while the market share behind them keeps falling.