ASML
In plain wordsA Dutch maker of the giant machines that print circuit patterns onto chips. It alone can build the extreme-ultraviolet models on which today's most advanced chips, including AI chips, depend.
The Dutch company that dominates photolithography, the chipmaking step in which light projects circuit patterns onto silicon wafers. Its extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) scanners, which work with 13.5-nanometer light, have no competitor anywhere, and production at the most advanced process nodesprocess node, n.: The label for a generation of chip-making technology, like '3 nanometer'. Smaller numbers mean newer, denser chips, but the number no longer measures any actual part of the chip. depends on them. Each EUV machine costs well over $150 million and depends on a specialized supply chain, including Zeiss optics from Germany and light sources from ASML's San Diego subsidiary Cymer, which makes EUV one of the narrowest chokepoints in the production of AI accelerators. Since 2019 the Dutch government, under US pressure, has withheld EUV export licenses for China, and from 2023 it also restricted some advanced deep-ultraviolet systems, making ASML a key instrument of export controls on AI chipsexport controls on AI chips, n.: Government rules that limit which countries and companies may buy the most advanced AI chips and the machines used to make them. The United States uses them mainly to slow China's progress in AI.. In 2025 it became the largest shareholder of Mistral AIMistral AI, prop. n.: Europe's best-known builder of large AI language models, a Paris start-up dating from 2023 whose chatbot is called Le Chat. Many of its models are free for anyone to download and run..
Origin
Founded in 1984 as ASM Lithography, a joint venture of Philips and ASM International, and headquartered in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. After decades of EUV development with partners, it shipped production EUV systems from 2017, which entered high-volume chipmaking in 2019. Christophe Fouquet became chief executive in 2024.
Related
- TSMCTSMC, prop. n.: The Taiwanese company that manufactures most of the world's advanced computer chips, including nearly all of the specialized chips used to train and run AI.
- process nodeprocess node, n.: The label for a generation of chip-making technology, like '3 nanometer'. Smaller numbers mean newer, denser chips, but the number no longer measures any actual part of the chip.
- semiconductor foundrysemiconductor foundry, n.: A factory company that manufactures chips designed by other companies. Taiwan's TSMC, the largest, makes nearly all of the world's most advanced AI chips.
- export controls on AI chipsexport controls on AI chips, n.: Government rules that limit which countries and companies may buy the most advanced AI chips and the machines used to make them. The United States uses them mainly to slow China's progress in AI.
- Moore's lawMoore's law, n.: Gordon Moore's prediction that chipmakers could pack twice as many transistors onto a chip roughly every two years — a pace that for decades made computers steadily faster and cheaper, and has slowed but not stopped.
- Mistral AIMistral AI, prop. n.: Europe's best-known builder of large AI language models, a Paris start-up dating from 2023 whose chatbot is called Le Chat. Many of its models are free for anyone to download and run.
Mentioned in
Mistral AIMistral AI, prop. n.: Europe's best-known builder of large AI language models, a Paris start-up dating from 2023 whose chatbot is called Le Chat. Many of its models are free for anyone to download and run., TSMCTSMC, prop. n.: The Taiwanese company that manufactures most of the world's advanced computer chips, including nearly all of the specialized chips used to train and run AI.