Jabil, Inc. JBL is taking various initiatives to get a strong foothold in the expanding AI infrastructure space. The company is betting big on the AI data center market. The company’s innovation strategy is focused on becoming full stack AI infrastructure partner for hyperscalers. Hence, the company is expanding its portfolio to cater to all critical aspects of AI infrastructure, including compute, networking, power distribution and thermal cooling capabilities.
Per a report from Mordor Intelligence, the global AI data center market size is $49.49 billion in 2026. The market is projected to witness a compound annual growth rate of 25.32% and is expected to be valued at $152.91 billion in 2031. Jabil is expanding its portfolio offering to capitalize on this emerging market trend.
The company recently acquired Hanley Energy Group for $725 million in an all-cash transaction. Hanley specializes in designing, developing and deploying mission-critical power management solutions for data centers. It is also set to invest $500 million over the next several years in the Southeast U.S. region. The investment is focused on expanding manufacturing capabilities and workforce development for the cloud and AI data center verticals. The company has already developed a strong AI thermal management portfolio with the acquisition of Mikros.
As its customers in India expand high-speed interconnects to support a surge in AI workloads, this is driving demand for its next-generation liquid cooling solutions. The company has also secured a major hyperscaler customer win in Mexico. Such developments underscore Jabil’s growing prominence in expanding the AI hardware supply chain. Management estimates that AI-related revenues are expected to reach $12.1 billion in fiscal 2026, indicating 35% year over year growth, up from the prior estimation of 25% year over year growth.
How Are Competitors Faring?
Jabil faces competition from Flex Ltd. FLEX and Sanmina Corporation SANM in the AI infrastructure space. Sanmina, with its robust capabilities in advanced electronics manufacturing, is enabling the production of high-performance servers, networking solutions, and scalable platforms. These are vital components for a modern AI infrastructure ecosystem. Sanmina’s Viking Edge AI Computational Storage Appliance, which streamlines edge AI integration by combining compute, storage and networking, is gaining market traction.
Flex is aggressively moving into the high-growth data center market. Flex announced a partnership with LG Electronics to co-develop integrated modular cooling systems designed to tackle the growing thermal challenges of AI-driven data centers. Also, Flex announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to build modular, high-performance, energy-efficient AI data centers at scale. Such initiatives will significantly boost its commercial prospects.
JBL’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates
Jabil has gained 54.3% in the past year compared with the Electronic-Manufacturing Services industry’s growth of 91.6%.
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Going by the price/earnings ratio, the company’s shares currently trade at 20.47 forward earnings, lower than 25.78 for the industry.
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Earnings estimates for Jabil for 2025 have moved up 4.52% to $11.55 per share over the past 60 days, while the same for 2026 has increased 2.52% to $13.41.
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Jabil currently carries a Zacks Rank # (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
