ASML CEO says only ASML makes key machines for top AI chips

In short: ASML’s CEO says his company is the only one that makes the most advanced machines needed to produce the world’s top chips, including those used for AI.

What happened

Christophe Fouquet, the chief executive of Dutch chip equipment maker ASML, told the Financial Times that ASML has a total monopoly on its most advanced extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, machines. EUV is a way to “print” tiny patterns onto silicon wafers (like using an ultra-precise light-based stamp to make the circuits inside a computer chip).

Fouquet said more investors are noticing ASML because they have followed the AI supply chain backwards. Many people started with Nvidia’s AI chips, then looked at Taiwan’s TSMC, which manufactures many of those chips. Fouquet said the next question was, “How does TSMC make those chips?” and the answer often leads to ASML’s EUV machines.

The machines are extremely complex and expensive. The article describes an EUV machine as about the size of a double-decker bus and says it can cost around $400 million. Fouquet said building a second supplier would take huge amounts of time, learning, and investment.

He also criticised the impact of US-backed export restrictions that block ASML from selling EUV machines to China. Fouquet warned that if restrictions go too far, they could encourage China to speed up its own technology development and eventually create stronger competitors.

Why it matters

AI tools depend on advanced chips, and advanced chips depend on a small number of hard-to-replace suppliers. When one company controls a key “factory machine,” any disruption, whether political or industrial, can ripple out to prices, supply, and the pace of new AI products.

Source: Financial Times