ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet: No one is coming for us

Every time you use AI, you are, in some small way, depending on a 42-year-old, 44,000-person Dutch company that spends €4.5 billion each year to advance its technology. ASML, headquartered in the Netherlands, makes the machines that make the chips that make AI possible. More specifically, it makes the only machines in the world capable of printing the microscopic patterns on silicon wafers that define the most advanced semiconductors — a process called extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV. The machines are roughly the size of a school bus, take months to assemble, involve hundreds of suppliers, and cost anywhere from $200 million to upwards of $400 million apiece depending on the generation (prices that give even ASML’s biggest customers pause occasionally). That monopoly has made ASML the most valuable company in Europe, worth over $530 billion. And with the four largest American tech companies — Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Google — committing more than $600 billion in AI infrastructure spending this year alone, demand for ASML’s machines has surged to the point where the company has openly said the world won’t have enough chips for years. All that demand has also made ASML a target. Substrate, a San Francisco startup founded by a protégé of Peter Thiel, has raised more than $100 million and been valued at over $1 billion on the claim that it can build a rival lithography machine. …