Nvidia drops its quarterly earnings Wednesday, and European tech investors are watching just as closely as Wall Street. The AI chip giant's results will send ripples across the Atlantic, hitting everything from Dutch chipmaking equipment makers to British semiconductor designers. With Nvidia's valuation topping $2 trillion and AI infrastructure spending at record highs, companies like ASML, ARM Holdings, and a clutch of European component suppliers are bracing for market reactions that could swing their stocks 5-10% in either direction.
Nvidia has become the bellwether for the entire AI infrastructure buildout, and that influence stretches far beyond Silicon Valley. European markets open hours before New York, meaning traders in Amsterdam, London, and Frankfurt will be digesting Wednesday's after-hours earnings before U.S. investors have finished their morning coffee.
The most direct exposure sits with ASML, the Dutch company that holds a monopoly on extreme ultraviolet lithography machines - the only equipment capable of making the most advanced chips. Nvidia doesn't buy directly from ASML, but its manufacturing partners TSMC and Samsung do. Strong Nvidia guidance typically signals more orders flowing down the supply chain, which eventually lands on ASML's order books. The company's stock has moved an average of 6% in either direction following Nvidia's last three earnings reports, according to trading data.
ARM Holdings presents a different angle. The British chip designer licenses the architecture used in Nvidia's Grace CPU, which pairs with Nvidia's GPUs in next-generation AI servers. ARM's licensing revenue is directly tied to chip shipment volumes, and Nvidia has become one of its fastest-growing datacenter customers. The company's Cambridge headquarters has been modeling various Nvidia scenarios for weeks, with investor relations prepping for the inevitable analyst calls Thursday morning.
Germany's Infineon supplies power management chips that regulate voltage in AI servers, while France's STMicroelectronics provides components for Nvidia's automotive and edge computing products. Both companies have flagged AI infrastructure as growth drivers in recent quarters, making them vulnerable to any Nvidia guidance suggesting a slowdown in datacenter capital expenditure.
