Europe buys plenty of AI infrastructure but builds strikingly little of it. A new industry tally makes the gap concrete.
Companies based in the bloc hold just six percent of the EU’s data center semiconductor market, according to the Global Electronics Association.
The same study puts server manufacturing and assembly at seven percent.
Cloud infrastructure, the piece Europe most wants to own, comes in at eight percent.
The figures sit in a new report, From Chips to Systems, which argues Europe has spread its effort too thinly to turn local demand into local industry.
Contract chip manufacturing is largely Taiwan’s business, and most leading-edge processors are built there. Memory belongs to South Korean and US suppliers. American firms lead on servers, networking and storage, and for Europe the upshot is a continent keeping only a scattering of large suppliers to call its own.
The association points to the Cloud and AI Development Act, which aims to at least triple the bloc’s data center capacity within five to seven years, and to Chips Act 2.0 as steps in the right direction.
It argues those instruments need to be matched by others, and notes that boards, assembly services, packaging and substrates now sit beside fabrication as named targets of European industrial policy for the first time.
The group concedes Europe cannot build the chain with homegrown firms alone, and recommends using the size of the EU market to pull global manufacturers into expanding production inside the bloc.
