Europe's Share of US AI Equipment Imports Halves to 5.7%

Europe's share of US imports of AI-related equipment has fallen to about 5.7% as of July 2026, down from nearly 10% in early 2024, according to an analysis by ING economist Pablo Muylle published November 11. The decline comes despite strong growth in the value of European exports that feed the US artificial-intelligence build-out since 2022.

The numbers capture a split performance. European suppliers of power and cooling equipment have gained both sales and market share in the United States. Suppliers of compute hardware and networking equipment have not. That divergence decides the aggregate picture, because computing now takes a larger slice of total US demand for AI infrastructure, and European firms hold a smaller and declining share of that compute segment.

What does the data show?

ING tracked a selected basket of AI-related infrastructure goods imported into the United States. Within that basket:

• Europe's import share climbed to almost 10% in early 2024, then slid to roughly 5.7% by July 2026.
• China's share fell from around 20% in 2020 to below 5% at the latest observation.
• Power and cooling suppliers are the one European category gaining share.

The Chinese decline is steep and sustained. A share that stood near one fifth of the basket at the start of the decade has fallen by more than three quarters. That leaves room in the US market, but European firms have captured only part of it, and the part they capture is concentrated in lower-growth categories.

Why is Europe losing share while selling more?

The composition of US demand is shifting. Spending on AI infrastructure has moved toward computing and networking hardware, the segments where Europe is least competitive. European strength sits in power and cooling, categories that still grow but take a smaller portion of each data-center dollar.

Muylle's earlier work on AI and the global economy highlighted Europe's role as a supplier of equipment behind the build-out. The new figures confirm that role is real but narrowing in relative terms. Europe is not simply watching the US investment wave from the sidelines; it is participating, though on a shrinking slice of the value chain.

Where is European production actually rising?

Not evenly across the bloc. Output increases linked to this export demand are concentrated in the Netherlands, Sweden and Hungary, according to the ING analysis. Overall EU production of the relevant goods remains below early-2022 levels.

That distinction matters for policy and investment. A handful of member states carry the export growth, while the union as a whole has not returned to its pre-2022 production base. The Netherlands, home to ASML and a dense semiconductor supply chain, is the most prominent of the three.

What does this mean for the trade picture?

For investors tracking European exposure to AI capital spending, the takeaway is mixed. Headline export values to the US are rising strongly. Power and cooling, including thermal management and electrical infrastructure for data centers, is a genuinely growing European franchise. But the market is repricing toward compute and networking, where the US imports predominantly from Asian suppliers rather than European ones.

China's retreat from the US import basket, from roughly 20% to under 5% since 2020, has not translated into a European windfall. Other suppliers, largely in Asia, have absorbed the redistributed demand in the compute categories that now dominate the basket.

Unless European producers gain ground in computing and networking hardware, the pattern ING documents is likely to persist: rising absolute sales into the US AI build-out, concentrated in the Netherlands, Sweden and Hungary, alongside a continued erosion of Europe's overall share of the world's fastest-growing equipment import market.