ABB said on 20 October 2026 that its third-quarter orders reached $12,055 million, up 40%, which its chief executive called “a record $12 billion”. The Swiss engineering group said the growth was “Most notably so in the data center segment where we saw a triple-digit increase.”
Reuters reported the same day that ABB “is continuing to see a boom in spending on data centres used to power artificial intelligence”, and that the triple-digit rise in orders for data centre products continued the trend ABB saw in the second quarter.
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The key insight: As we read it, the AI buildout is showing up in ABB’s order book before its revenue line: orders rose 40% to $12,055 million while revenues rose 14%, and ABB singles out the data center segment for a triple-digit increase.
ABB reported third-quarter revenues of $9,701 million, up 14%, against $8,491 million a year earlier. Orders rose to $12,055 million from $8,606 million.
Operational EBITA was $2,026 million, a margin of 20.8%, up 1.6 percentage points, ABB said. Basic earnings per share were $0.65, down 2%, and free cash flow was $1,576 million.
ABB said order intake ran ahead of revenues, “yielding a book-to-bill of 1.24.”
Against expectations, Reuters said operational EBITA was slightly ahead of analyst forecasts of $2.0 billion, while revenue was slightly below forecasts of $9.74 billion in a company-gathered consensus.
ABB third-quarter 2026 orders of $12,055 million (up 40% from $8,606 million) and revenues of $9,701 million (up 14% from $8,491 million), with the third quarter of 2025 marked by the dashed lines, and a book-to-bill of 1.24, all from ABB’s Q3 2026 results release (20 October 2026). ABB says data-centre orders saw “a triple-digit increase” and gives no separate figure.
What Was Posted on X
Giampiero Frisio, President of ABB Electrification, joined @SquawkCNBC Asia exclusively to discuss our newly launched Infinitus direct-current technology and its potential to power AI data centers. Watch the interview: https://cnb.cx/46W8QXE #EngineeredToOutrun
ABB posted this on X on 2 October 2026, weeks before its results: Giampiero Frisio, President of ABB Electrification, discussed the newly launched Infinitus direct-current technology and its potential to power AI data centers on CNBC. In its 20 October results release, ABB called the Infinitus launch a significant milestone for the quarter, in which it reported a triple-digit increase in data center orders.
Bloomberg posted its report on X at 06:20 UTC on 20 October, saying ABB’s third-quarter orders surpassed expectations after demand for data center and utilities electrification components surged. The figures in this piece are ABB’s own: record orders of $12,055 million, up 40%, and what ABB called a triple-digit increase in its data center segment. The comparison with expectations is Bloomberg’s.
Where the Data Center Demand Shows Up
ABB did not put a figure on its data-centre orders beyond “a triple-digit increase”. Reuters said ABB has been seeing strong demand for products like power distribution and cooling systems used in data centres.
In the release, chief executive Morten Wierod called the launch of the Infinitus Direct Current portfolio a significant milestone, saying it enables “AI data center customers to achieve higher power density and improved energy efficiency.”
The portfolio includes a Solid State Transformer that ABB said will be commercially available in the second half of 2027.
ABB had promoted the same technology on 2 October 2026, when it posted that its head of electrification discussed Infinitus and “its potential to power AI data centers” on CNBC.
Capacity, Capex and a Japan Deal
Wierod said ABB is scaling capacity step by step. “We already trend at a higher capex level of around $1 billion and do not expect it to rise further in the mid-term,” he said.
ABB also announced that it will acquire a controlling 51 percent stake in a joint venture with Mitsubishi Electric’s low voltage power distributionbusiness, plus the related sales operations outside Japan, for a total consideration of around JPY 79 billion, or about $495 million, it said.
ABB said the deal would make it the low voltage market leader in Japan and let it benefit from broad electric power trends “including any local data center build-out”.
What ABB Expects
For the fourth quarter, ABB said it expects comparable revenuegrowth broadly similar to the third quarter, and its Operational EBITA margin to soften sequentially, though by less than the historical pattern.
For the full year 2026, ABB said it expects a positive book-to-bill and comparable revenuegrowth in the “low teens” range, with the reported Operational EBITA margin improving by at least 270 basis points.
The Structural Read
As we read it, the gap between orders and revenues is the signal: ABB reports a book-to-bill of 1.24, meaning it booked more new work than it shipped in the quarter.
As we read it, the demand sits in the power layer of the data center: Reuters points to power distribution and cooling systems, and ABB’s own milestone for the quarter was a direct current portfolio for AI data center customers.
As we read it, ABB is meeting the orders with steady spending rather than a capex jump: its chief executive says capex trends at around $1 billion and is not expected to rise further in the mid-term. For the financing side of the same buildout, see our report on SoftBank’s credit risk.
The framework says “The structural bottleneck isn’t computing, it’s electrons.”
As we read it, ABB sells into that layer: power distribution, cooling and direct current systems for data centers. The framework was published in December 2025 and does not discuss ABB’s results.
What Is Not Established
ABB does not give the size of its data-centre orders or their share of the $12,055 million total, so the triple-digit increase cannot be turned into a dollar figure from the release.
The forecast comparisons come from Reuters, citing a company-gathered consensus, not from ABB’s release. The outlook is ABB’s own expectation.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Execution Fault Lines, Concentrated Demand, and Geopolitical Firewalls
This piece is part of this week’s issue: the AI build is not short of demand for its parts. It is short of cheap money, and its end revenue rests on a narrow base of large, often venture-funded buyers.
ABB reported record third-quarter orders of $12,055 million, up 40%, on 20 October 2026, and said the data center segment saw a triple-digit increase, a rise Reuters described as a continuing boom in spending on data centres used to power artificial intelligence.
A note on sourcing. This piece is built on ABB’s Q3 2026 results release of 20 October 2026, read in full, Reuters’ report of the same day, read in full, and ABB’s 2 October 2026 post on X. The forecast comparisons are Reuters’, citing a company-gathered consensus. The outlook is ABB’s own expectation. Nothing here is a forecast of ours, and nothing here is financial or investment advice.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
