Prysmian's $3.8 Billion Atkore Deal Is a Bet on the Wiring Behind the AI Boom

On Monday morning, Italy's Prysmian reached across the Atlantic and wrote a $3.8 billion check for a company most Americans have never heard of. Atkore doesn't make chatbots or chips. It makes the humble metal tubes, conduit and cable trays that snake through the guts of every warehouse, hospital and — crucially — every hyperscale data center going up across America. And that is exactly the point.

The all-cash deal, announced before the U.S. market opened, values the Harvey, Illinois manufacturer at $95.00 per share. Atkore stock erupted, jumping about 26% in premarket trading to roughly $92, according to Investing.com — its investors suddenly holding a lottery ticket that had been gathering dust. Just ten months earlier, before Atkore put itself up for strategic review, the shares fetched $60.69.

The numbers behind the deal

Per Atkore's own announcement, Prysmian's offer represents a premium of approximately 30% to Atkore's July 31 closing price of $72.96, and roughly 57% to the $60.69 the stock traded at on September 29, 2025 — the last session before the company launched its strategic review. On a valuation basis, Prysmian's press release pegs the deal at 9.8 times Atkore's fiscal 2025 EBITDA, or 7.1 times once you fold in the roughly $150 million in annual run-rate pre-tax cost savings the company expects to squeeze out within three years of closing.

Atkore is no minnow. In its 2025 fiscal year the company booked $2.85 billion in revenue and $386 million in EBITDA, employing around 5,400 people worldwide, according to Reuters. And in a neat piece of timing, Atkore posted strong quarterly earnings the same day: fiscal third-quarter net sales rose 8.1% to $794.8 million, and adjusted earnings landed at $1.92 a share — comfortably ahead of the roughly $1.78 analysts had penciled in, per Investing.com.

Why an Italian cable giant wants American conduit

Prysmian, a 150-year-old Milan-based cable colossus, isn't a stranger to shopping in America. In July 2024 it swallowed Texas-based Encore Wire for about $4.2 billion, planting a flag in the U.S. wire-and-cable market. The Atkore deal is the logical next move: Encore makes the copper and aluminum wire, Atkore makes the conduit and trays that wire runs through. Bolt them together and Prysmian can walk into a contractor's office selling the whole electrical package rather than a single slice of it.

"Electrification, AI-driven data centers and digitalization all require major investments in infrastructure, and they are critical to the modern economy, and the opportunity is substantial in the United States," Prysmian CEO Massimo Battaini said in a statement. On the analyst call, Reuters reported, he put it more bluntly: because both companies sell complementary products to the same customers, a bundled offer gives them a better shot at winning the business.

The AI angle nobody's talking about

Here's the story hiding underneath the press release. Artificial intelligence doesn't just run on silicon — it runs on electricity, and moving that electricity takes staggering amounts of copper, cable and conduit. Goldman Sachs Research, in a February 2025 report by senior analyst James Schneider, projected that global data-center power demand would rise 50% by 2027 and by as much as 165% by the end of the decade versus 2023 — an estimate the bank has since pushed even higher. Macquarie, in a January 2025 strategy note, estimated that data centers alone could consume between 330,000 and 420,000 tonnes of copper a year by 2030, with a midpoint of 375,000 tonnes. And S&P Global, in a January 2026 study titled "Copper in the Age of AI," warned that a projected 10-million-tonne supply deficit by 2040 amounts to a "systemic risk for global industries, technological advancement and economic growth."

That's the wave Prysmian is trying to surf. Every 500-megawatt AI campus rising in northern Virginia or Texas needs miles of copper-intensive cabling, busbars, transformers and the conduit to house it all. Dealmakers have noticed: M&A tied to power, grid and electrification infrastructure has exploded in 2026 as capital chases anything with "data center" in the pitch deck. According to EY, deal value in the power and utilities space surged 341% year-over-year in one recent stretch, with buyers openly chasing "the convergence between power generation and AI infrastructure."

The catch: this deal isn't done yet

For all the fireworks, Atkore traded a few dollars shy of the $95 offer — a gap that tells you the market is pricing in a sliver of risk. The deal still needs the blessing of Atkore shareholders and regulators, and Prysmian is targeting a close by the end of 2026. History offers some comfort: when Prysmian bought Encore Wire in 2024, U.S. antitrust regulators cleared the transaction without a second request, the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period expiring in under two months. Because conduit and wire are complementary rather than directly competing products, a repeat clearance looks plausible — though nothing is guaranteed until the ink dries. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is advising Prysmian on the legal side, with Morgan Stanley as sole financial adviser; Citi and J.P. Morgan are advising Atkore.

Investors in Milan were less thrilled than those in Illinois. Prysmian shares opened higher, then reversed to trade down around 2% at €117.8, underperforming a rising Italian market, according to Investing.com — a sign some shareholders are chewing on the price tag and the debt-and-equity mix funding it. It's worth noting that Prysmian paid a richer multiple for Atkore (9.8x EBITDA) than the 8.2x it paid for Encore Wire in 2024, which is quietly fueling a "did they overpay?" debate. The deal also arrives with an activist fingerprint: Atkore had been under pressure to explore a sale after Irenic Capital built a stake and pushed for strategic alternatives in late 2025.

What to watch next

The Atkore takeover is a clean tell about where smart money thinks the AI build-out is heading: not just the flashy chipmakers, but the unglamorous plumbing that keeps the lights on. Watch for sell-side analysts to publish deal-specific ratings over the coming days, for the merger-arbitrage spread to narrow or widen as the year-end deadline approaches, and for rival electrical suppliers — think nVent, Eaton or privately held Southwire — to start attracting takeover chatter of their own. In the AI economy, the pick-and-shovel plays are increasingly the ones worth digging into.