VELDHOVEN, July 8 — The shift is happening right under the feet of the global chip industry, and it’s being engineered in a single Dutch town. ASML Holding, the company that holds a monopoly on the machines needed to build the world’s most advanced chips, has become the strategic bottleneck no government can ignore. Based in Veldhoven and founded in 1984, ASML is the sole supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography machines.
Without them, no country can manufacture leading-edge semiconductors at 7 nanometers and below. The numbers tell the story of a company that has quietly become one of Europe’s most valuable tech firms.
By 2023, ASML’s market capitalization had climbed past $250 billion. Its 2022 revenue hit €21.2 billion. Each EUV machine costs over $150 million and weighs 180 tons.
As of 2023, ASML had shipped roughly 200 of these systems globally.
The Machine That Changed Everything
EUV lithography is a feat of physics that sounds almost like science fiction. The system uses a laser to vaporize tiny tin droplets, creating plasma that emits light at a 13.5-nanometer wavelength. That precision allows chipmakers to etch impossibly fine circuit patterns onto silicon wafers.
ASML shipped its first production EUV system in 2018. The customer was TSMC, the Taiwanese chip giant.
Today, ASML’s customer list includes TSMC, Samsung, and Intel, all of which rely on its machines. But ASML doesn’t just make EUV systems. It also produces deep ultraviolet lithography machines, which are less advanced but remain critical for older chip nodes.
Geopolitics at the Lithography Gate
Here’s where the trend underneath gets sharp. The US government pressured the Netherlands in 2019 to restrict ASML’s EUV exports to China. That was the opening move.
Then in July 2023, the Dutch government went further, announcing additional export controls on DUV systems as well. The implications are huge.
Without access to ASML’s machines, China cannot produce its own advanced chips. The technology is now a strategic chokepoint in the intensifying US-China tech rivalry. Every leading-edge chip in every smartphone, data center, and AI accelerator passes through a machine built in Veldhoven.
Watch this space. ASML’s position as the sole EUV supplier means its export policies — and the governments that shape them — will determine which countries can build the next generation of computing hardware.
The company’s technology is no longer just an engineering marvel. It’s a geopolitical weapon, and the shift is only accelerating.
