Economists at the ECB have built a new “AI exposure” gauge by scanning earnings calls of STOXX Europe 600 firms, tracking how AI adoption and market impacts spread beyond tech.
Artificial intelligence has been reshaping global financial markets since late 2022, coinciding with a sharp rally in technology shares. Major equity benchmarks show the pattern clearly: technology subsectors have outpaced their broader indices, with the divergence particularly pronounced in the United States, where a small cluster of hyperscale firms has driven much of the gains. In Europe, the strongest effects have been visible among companies positioned upstream in the buildout of AI infrastructure, which have benefited from rising investment in computing capacity, chips, and related inputs.
But the market impact of AI is not confined to a narrow group of infrastructure suppliers, nor did it begin only with the recent wave of attention. Across industries, firms are increasingly weaving AI into strategy—either by creating products that incorporate AI capabilities or by deploying AI-enabled tools to streamline operations and lift productivity. To capture this broader and evolving picture, economists at the European Central Bank have developed a new firm-level indicator of “AI exposure” based on what companies say in their earnings calls.
The measure is constructed by scanning earnings call transcripts for AI-related discussions and classifying firms as AI-exposed when management links AI to one or more of three channels: providing AI-related infrastructure, developing AI-enhanced products, or improving business processes and productivity. Applied to constituents of the STOXX Europe 600, the method is designed to identify both obvious technology providers and firms in non-tech sectors that are embedding AI in offerings or internal workflows.
A key advantage of relying on contemporaneous corporate disclosures is that it tracks how the technology’s role changes over time. As AI matures and diffuses, the content of firms’ statements tends to shift—making a transcript-based gauge useful for monitoring real-time developments that are often hard to pin down using slower-moving classifications. The ECB team therefore measures exposure quarterly from 2017 onward and treats it as time-varying, an approach that helps account for stable differences across firms as well as sector-specific swings over time.
Using this framework, the researchers find that AI exposure among large European listed firms has increased sharply since 2022. Moreover, the tone and purpose of AI references reveal what companies believe is driving value. Around three-quarters of AI-mentioning earnings calls point to product innovation or growth opportunities tied to AI-enhanced offerings, while about half discuss productivity improvements; some calls include both themes.
The distribution is uneven across sectors and has evolved with major milestones in public-facing AI. Information technology firms were discussing AI-driven product innovation as early as 2017. By contrast, many companies outside IT only began emphasizing AI-related efficiency gains after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, suggesting that widely available generative AI tools accelerated adoption narratives beyond the tech sector.
These patterns align with evidence from the ECB’s Survey on the Access to Finance of Enterprises in the euro area (SAFE), conducted in June and December 2025. In that survey, IT firms reported AI use more frequently in innovation-focused applications, while firms in manufacturing, construction, trade and other services placed greater weight on cost savings—mirroring the transcript-based split between product-driven and productivity-driven exposure.
The ECB analysis uses the new measure to study how AI exposure shows up in European firms’ equity returns and corporate bond spreads, extending the market discussion from stocks alone to the pricing of corporate credit.
Why it matters
If investors increasingly differentiate firms based on credible AI-related growth and efficiency narratives, the cost of raising money in markets—through shares or bonds—could diverge across companies and sectors. That matters for European firms competing for capital with US peers during a technology-driven investment cycle. Watch for whether AI mentions shift from broad ambition to measurable investment plans and results, as markets may reward proof of execution more than promises.