ASML

While the technology sector is bleeding from layoffs, ASML is walking in the opposite direction: 20,000 euros to stay

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2026 is being a rush of layoffs in technology companies. It is estimated that in the first four months, at least 92,000 employees in the technology sector have lost their jobs with the excuse that we must invest more in AI. Meanwhile, the opposite is happening in semiconductor and component companies: they are paying bonuses so they don’t leave. That’s just what ASML is doing. what has happened. They tell it in Eindhovens Dagblad: ASML is going to offer its employees a share package worth 20,000 euros to all employees who continue to work in the company in 2030. The shares will be available from January 1, 2027 and the condition to be able to collect it is to continue working in the company on January 1, 2030. Why it is important. The AI ​​boom has two sides. On one side we have technology companies like Meta that They are investing very aggressively in AImainly in the construction of data centers. In addition, AI serves to automate processes and thus requires less labor. The other downside is companies like ASML, Samsung or SK Hynix that cannot afford to manufacture more components that make the AI ​​boom possible. Here you don’t say goodbye, here you try to retain talent with a checkbook. Rshare the benefits. In total, ASML has 44,500 employees worldwide, of which around 23,500 work at its headquarters in Veldhoven. If when 2030 arrives all workers are still in the company, ASML would have to disburse 890 million euros. ASML leads the ranking of European companies with the highest market capitalization. Only the last quarter brought in 9.3 billion euros, with a net profit of 2.92 billion. Come on, they can afford it. The Samsung case. A few months ago, Samsung also confirmed that would pay a bonus to its workers in the semiconductor division. However, it did not leave the company, but was the result of a negotiation with the employees, which They threatened a strike that would paralyze the factories. Finally Samsung gave in and employees will get a bonus of $340,000 on average. The bad part is that this has created tensions within the company because staff in other divisions such as devices would get a much smaller bonus, in some cases $4,000. Meanwhile in Silicon Valley. As we said at the beginning, technology companies have reduced their workforce considerably so far this year. In May Meta fired 8,000 employeesMicrosoft offered early retirement to many othersOracle too gave a door to thousands of workers (no figure yet confirmed), Amazon too… The serious thing is that it is not a financial problem, but rather The reason behind the vast majority of these layoffs is AI. It is not about replacing employees with AI, but rather that many companies are completely restructuring themselves to develop AI. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | AI has become the perfect alibi for anything: it serves companies both to cut back and to expand

This is how China circumvents 2,000 ASML patents with a laser trick

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The extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) is the tightest bottleneck in the entire semiconductor industry. Only one company in the world, the Dutch ASML, manufactures these machines, essential for producing integrated circuits below 7 nm, and since 2019 is prohibited from selling its most advanced models to China due to US pressure. Each device costs between 200 and 400 million dollars, and so far not a single Chinese client has managed to obtain one. A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, based at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, has built China’s first laser-plasma EUV light source platform. In front is Lin Nanformer ASML scientist and technical manager of its light sources for metrology, who returned to China in 2021 as part of a state talent attraction program. His team has chosen a path that deliberately avoids ASML’s method, as well as more than 2,000 of its patents. Qiu Yanfang, Chinese columnist specializing in semiconductors, has summed it up unambiguously: This patent rodeo is not just a legal maneuver; It’s genuine engineering. And it is this assessment, published just two weeks ago, that has once again put the focus on how far China has really come in its race for technological independence in lithography. The longest road to mass production The technical trick is this: while ASML generates EUV light by firing powerful carbon dioxide lasers at moving tin droplets (a method known as LPP), Lin Nan’s team uses a 1-micron solid-state laser that hits a solid tin target. In a published article In December 2024, Lin and his team were already arguing that this type of laser could replace carbon dioxide lasers as a next-generation source thanks to its compact size and higher conversion efficiency. However, Qiu Yanfang herself qualifies her initial enthusiasm. In the short term, he maintains, this solid-state source cannot shake ASML’s dominance, since the entire global semiconductor industry has built its supply chains, patents and engineering expertise around the carbon dioxide laser. Although Chinese technology achieves results in the laboratory, it still has a long way to go until achieve large scale production. The real value of Lin’s achievement, in any case, lies in laying the foundation and forging a research team that covers everything from theory to applied engineering. The Chinese Government aims to produce chips with this technology in 2028, although many analysts consider 2030 a more realistic date. This effort also coexists with another parallel and much more hermetic path. As revealed Reuters As of December 2025, China has assembled a working prototype EUV machine inside a high-security laboratory in Shenzhen, although it has not yet manufactured functional integrated circuits. Huawei coordinates this initiative, which involves thousands of engineers: the Harbin Institute of Technology is in charge of the light source, the Changchun Institute of Optics for the optical systems, and SMEE (Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment) of the final integration, with YesCarrier (the Chinese company backed by the Shenzhen Government and linked to Huawei) as another of the key actors. The Chinese Government aims to produce chips with this technology in 2028, although many of the analysts consider 2030 a more realistic date. For now, no Chinese prototype has proven to be capable of manufacturing commercial integrated circuits with its own UVE lithography, and doubts about the real speed of this advance have returned to the front line of information for a very different reason. US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has raised ASML senior managers the possibility that one of its SVU teams has reached China through clandestine channels, something that the Dutch company has denied emphatically: none of its 314 operational EUV machines in the world, nor is any of the 26 already withdrawn located in Chinese territory. China does not have its EUV machine yet. But, thanks to Lin Nan, it now has something that until recently it didn’t have either: its own path to try to build it. Image | ASML More information | Asia Times In Xataka | ASML’s new lithography equipment divides chipmakers. TSMC plans not to use it until 2030

ASML sells the most important machines in the chip industry. Now everything indicates that they will be more expensive

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ASML, the only company in the world capable of manufacturing lithography equipment extreme ultraviolet (EUV) needed to produce the most advanced chips, is preparing for a rise in costs in its machinery. And the first to stand up has been, precisely, its most important client: TSMC. And according to has revealed The Information, the Taiwanese manufacturer is beginning to resist negotiations. Why is it important. ASML is the bottleneck of the entire semiconductor industry. Without their machines, neither Nvidia, nor Apple, nor TSMC, nor Samsung would be able to manufacture the chips that fuel the artificial intelligence boom. That it decides to raise prices, something The Information says it has rarely done in its history, is a sign of the extent to which demand for AI has given the company bargaining power it didn’t have before. In detail. ASML’s plans affect its two large families of machines. On the one hand, according to has confirmed The company’s own financial director, Roger Dassen, during the presentation of second quarter results, there is a way to increase the price of low numerical aperture (Low-NA) EUV systems, its most in-demand technology. On the other hand, ASML has already told several customers, including Chinese manufacturers, that their DUV (deep ultraviolet, somewhat less advanced but still essential) equipment will cost 10% more, according to share the middle. Some Chinese clients have already agreed to pay that extra cost; TSMC, on the other hand, has not wanted to jump through hoops for the moment. Each new generation of ASML machines processes more wafers per hour and improves etching precision, which means more and higher quality chips for its customers. It is what the company itself calls “value-based pricing”, since the logic that follows is that if its equipment generates more economic benefit for the factories that use it, ASML wants to keep a part of that additional benefit, as Dassen explained in the conference with analysts. Between the lines. TSMC’s anger has its explanation. And the Taiwanese manufacturer has been defending for years that You do not need to jump to the very expensive High-NA equipment (which exceed 350 million euros per unit) and that can continue to squeeze out its cheaper Low-NA machines through design improvements and computational photolithography techniques. In fact, according to they count From Tom’s Hardware, its entire manufacturing roadmap until 2030 is based on that premise. If ASML makes precisely those Low-NA machines more expensive as their performance improves, the cost advantage that TSMC had built with that strategy is reduced. Additionally, TSMC needs to buy dozens of these machines for its new plants in Taiwan, the United States and Japan, so even a moderate increase can add billions of dollars to its investment. It is also worth noting that ASML has practically sold its production capacity until 2027 and a good part of 2028, with prices already agreed in those contracts. That means that, in practice, the company could only apply the new rates to orders delivered from the second half of 2028. TSMC will not notice the blow immediately, but it knows that what is negotiated now will mark the price of hundreds of machines in the coming years. And now what. The pulse comes at a time of historic results for ASML. And on Wednesday the company raised its sales forecast for 2026 to a range of between 43,000 and 45,000 million euros, well above what the market expected, according to collect Bloomberg. Gross margin will also improve to 56%, up from 53% previously forecast. To meet demand, ASML plans to increase its manufacturing capacity of its most important EUV machines by 30% this year, and is studying another similar increase for 2028. Cover image | ASML In Xataka | The war in Iran and the Chinese veto redraw the world map of helium for semiconductors

ASML host nation enters anti-Chinese bloc

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ASML is an essential piece in the technological and commercial war that the US and China are fighting to gain world supremacy. This company from the Netherlands is, at the moment, the only one capable of manufacturing the equipment extreme ultraviolet photolithography (UVE) that use TSMC, Samsung, Intel or SK Hynix to produce your cutting-edge chips. This absolute bottleneck position explains why the Netherlands’ formal accession to the Pax Silica initiative, the US-led semiconductor bloc to reduce dependence on China, is one of the most relevant geostrategic movements of 2026. Pax Silica, or “Silicon Peace”, was born in December 2025 at the initiative of the US State Department with a very clear objective: to build semiconductor supply chains, artificial intelligence (AI) and rare earths unlinked from China. The trap of being essential This bloc started with seven signatory countries and has been adding accessions until reaching sixteen members. The Netherlands participates from the beginning, but with the status of non-signatory partner. This week Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma traveled to Washington to finalize the official accession in a meeting with Trade Secretary Howard Lutnick. The problem is that this firm has not put an end to the friction. Sjoerdsma acknowledged before the press that both countries share the goal of preventing sensitive technology reach dangerous handsbut he was also very explicit in his rejection of MATCH law (Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware o Multilateral Alignment of Technological Controls in Hardware). “The starting point for the Netherlands is that each country is responsible for its own laws,” said Sjoerd Sjoerdsma. This bipartisan proposal would force companies like ASML to stop maintaining even machines already delivered to China under the threat of losing access to American components, software, and customers. “The starting point of the Netherlands is that each country is responsible for its own laws,” declared Sjoerd Sjoerdsma. The trade and technology war between Washington and Beijing has been escalating for years. The US vetoed Huawei and ZTE in its government agencies in 2019, expanded export controls of semiconductors in 2022 under the mandate of Joe Biden and approved the sale of some Nvidia GPUs to China in 2026. Beijing responded by restricting access to its rare earths and manufacturing industry. The result was paradoxical: a boom of domestic chip production in China and, in parallel, a buoyant smuggling industry that ended up with several executives of American companies in jail. Pax Silica and the MATCH Act are the most ambitious and most coercive version of this decoupling strategy. For the Netherlands, this scenario does not have a clean exit. ASML is not only its most valuable company: it is the reason why an economy of 18 million people influences global politics of supply chains much deeper than its size corresponds to. Without their SVU lithography machines, chipmakers like TSMC, Micron or Samsung would not be able to produce the cutting-edge hardware they make today. But that same relevance makes ASML a target for legislation that could force ever-closer integration with Washington, without whose components, software and market access ASML itself would find itself in serious difficulty. Image | ASML More information | Tom’s Hardware In Xataka | Japan wants to regain leadership as a manufacturer of lithography equipment. And he has a plan to break ASML’s monopoly In Xataka | An unexpected salvation for the end user emerges from the memory market debacle: Chinese chips

A US company claims it can build a cutting-edge lithography machine. ASML says not even remotely

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Substrate is not just another startup. It was founded in 2022 by brothers James and Oliver Proud, and is backed by Peter Thiel (he co-founded PayPal and is one of the largest investors in Silicon Valley). Despite having existed for only four years, it has raised more than 100 million dollars and has been valued at more than 1 billion. This very successful start-up is based on a promise: the Proud brothers claim that they can build photolithography equipment as advanced as the most sophisticated they have. the Dutch company ASML. Currently this firm from the Netherlands is the only one capable of manufacturing the machines extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) that are used to produce cutting-edge semiconductors, which has placed it in an effective monopoly position in the global semiconductor industry. In the current scenario of confrontation with China, the US is interested in having a national company capable of manufacturing cutting-edge lithography equipment. This is Substrate’s trump card. However, we have reasonable grounds for reluctantly taking up the promise of the Proud brothers. “No one is coming for us” Christophe Fouquet, the general director of ASML, assures that no company on the planet is in a position to compete with them. During a conversation with Connie Loizos, an editor at TechCrunch, Fouquet has argued that “the challenges of lithography are many. Being able to make an image is a starting point, but that image must be produced in large quantities, at very low cost, at high speed and with nanometric precision.” It makes sense. “We had to solve only one problem: obtaining extreme ultraviolet light. And that alone took us 20 years” “I always say that the only reason ASML was able to build an EUV machine is because 80% of it already existed from prior knowledge and products developed over time. We had to solve just one problem: getting the extreme ultraviolet light. And that alone took us 20 years. When starting from scratch, the challenge is enormous. I have heard many statements. And I have seen some images. But we got our first image with EUV technology 30 years ago, and even then we need 20 more years of hard work to turn it into a manufacturing system,” points out the head of ASML. It is clear that Christophe Fouquet trusts his technology. And in your product. However, the starting point of Substrate is different from that of ASML. This American startup uses a particle accelerator as a light source for an X-ray lithography tool instead of using extreme ultraviolet light like ASML. According to the Proud brothers Their technology allows them to manufacture a silicon wafer at an order of magnitude lower cost than with ASML’s EUV approach. Be that as it may, there is another fundamental difference between the ASML and Substrate strategies. And instead of supplying machines to chip manufacturers, as ASML does, Substrate wants to establish its own network of semiconductor production plants equipped with its photolithography machines. Furthermore, its plan is very ambitious: it aims to produce cutting-edge integrated circuits on a large scale in 2028. It sounds daring, no doubt, but time, as always, will put everything in its place. Image | ASML More information | TechCrunch In Xataka | TSMC has made the chip industry’s most intriguing decision: not to use ASML’s most advanced machines

Manufacturing 60 machines a year may not seem like much. In practice, those of the European ASML are setting the pace of AI

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Sixty machines a year sounds like a lot when we talk about artificial intelligence. We are used to huge numbers: data centers, billions of dollars and increasingly ambitious models. But AI also depends on things that are much more physical and difficult to scale. And that’s where ASMLa European company that manufactures lithography equipment to produce advanced chips, becomes a difficult piece to avoid. This year it will manufacture at least 60 machines. And they will be indispensable. To get an idea of ​​scale, artificial intelligence does not rely solely on better models. Just a few days ago, Reuters pointed out that Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet plan to allocate more than $600 billion in capital spending in 2026 to expand their AI infrastructure. These players need semiconductor manufacturers, who need advanced technology to produce the chips that will equip their customers’ future data centers. Here ASML appears in all its dimension. The Dutch company does not manufacture the chips that will end up in data centers, but it does manufacture the machines that allow the most advanced ones to be produced at scale. For now, because China is accelerating this raceis the only global supplier of this equipment, known as extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. This position explains why a company based in Veldhoven has become such a relevant piece for a career that is usually viewed from Silicon Valley or Taiwan, but that also has a decisive role in Europe. The European manufacturer that sets the pace for AI The striking thing is that the great jump translates into a very specific figure. The data comes to us from the last presentation of the firm’s financial results, specifically those of the first fiscal quarter of 2026. Roger Dassen, VP and CFO of ASML, pointed out that they plan to manufacture at least 60 standard EUV machines in 2026. That is 36% more than those sold in 2025. In other words: in an industry that is measured in gigantic investments, significantly increasing production means moving to dozens of machines, not hundreds or thousands. By 2027, the firm hopes to reach at least 80 units. TWINSCAN EXE:5000 Manufacturing more units is not as simple as expanding an assembly line. ASML’s most advanced lithography equipment has a size comparable to that of a medium bus and they are among the most complex devices ever created. They are huge systems, extremely precise and assembled for months in clean roomswith purified air to avoid any contamination. The reason is simple: in this process, a single dust particle can disrupt production. That’s why scaling doesn’t just depend on having more orders on the table. There is a part of this history that remains outside the ASML factories, but that weighs almost as much as its own production. Their customers also need to build clean rooms to install the machines they purchase, a task that requires specialized labor, electrical connections, technical expertise and abundant available power. It is a basic condition for these dozens of pieces of equipment to later translate into more real manufacturing capacity. In other words: the machine matters, but the place prepared to receive it and put it to work also matters. Then there’s everything that happens before one of those systems leaves the Dutch company. Their equipment is built with components from more than 5,000 suppliersso increasing the pace requires that entire network to move forward at once. If one of those links does not arrive, the whole may suffer. And talent adds another difficulty: in the south of the Netherlands, many technical profiles are already in the company or in your supply chain. That’s why Veldhoven’s signature searches for candidates at Dutch and foreign universitieswithout weakening the partners you need to grow. That is the reverse of a figure that, in isolation, may seem small. Sixty machines don’t sound like much in an industry that talks about gigantic models, data centers and huge budgets. But what we have seen is that each of these units is part of a physical, technical and human chain that is much more difficult to accelerate than it seems. This boom is precisely what has helped consolidate ASML as the European company with the highest stock market valueahead of names like LVMH either Hermes. AI is also at play here on the Old Continent. Images | ASML (1, 2) In Xataka | ASML has the most in-demand and advanced lithography machines in the world. And now also, his Lego set

The chip industry has its own Lego black market. ASML created it by accident

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Rick Lenssen works as a data analyst at the Dutch company ASML and builds Lego models on the weekends. It could have remained there, a mere hobby shared with his children if the company that employs him did not design and manufacture the lithography machines necessary to produce microchips, one of the key elements of current technology and one of the key suppliers of TSMC, Samsung or Intel. Now, his Lego designs imitating the original machines reach four-digit figures on eBay. 380 million in 851 pieces. It appeared in the ASML online store at the end of November 2024: a Lego model called TWINSCAN EXE:5000, measured 35 centimeters long and cost $227.95. It reproduced the high numerical aperture extreme ultraviolet (High-NA EUV) lithography machine that the company delivered to Intel in late 2023 and that allows chips to be printed from its 2 nanometer node. The actual equipment weighs 165 tons, has more than 100,000 parts and had to be transported in three Boeing 747s. The Lego set reproduced it in the style of the popular toy brand, it included a purple ray that represented ultraviolet light and a minifigure with the full clean room suit that technicians wear. The product sheet, perhaps anticipating what was to come, already warned that multiple orders from the same customer would be cancelled. Brick Lenssen. This is the nickname given to Rick Lenssen, a 39-year-old company employee who became interested in Legos. by chanceafter taking his children to a toy fair in the Netherlands. His first personal project was an exact replica of the ASML campus in Veldhoven: two years of work, 2,500 euros out of his pocket and 25,000 pieces, with details as obsessive as the peregrine falcon that nests on a roof of the complex, accompanied by a pigeon that, according to him, acts as food. He designed everything first on the computer and assembled it in the attic of his house. Where do I put this. Lenssen then encountered a drama that will be familiar to any Lego fan: what to do once you finish building the set. He offered it to the campus itself, but they didn’t want it. Lenssen wrote to ASML’s CEO on a Friday night, and within hours he wrote back saying he loved the set. To get the model out of the attic, it had to be dismantled piece by piece (like the real ASML machines), and company workers loaded it into a van. Today it is the first thing visitors see when they arrive at the company’s reception. It’s official. The jump to merchandising officer arrived later, with a model of the skyline of the campus in charge of promoting an internal app, and then the two models of machines. He was not the first: Jeroen Ottens, an ASML engineer who had worked at Lego, I had modeled a previous version. The cheapest model in the current range, the TWINSCAN NXE:3400C, at $166.70, was not born as a commercial product either: it started as internal training tool before becoming a special edition open to the public. It took Lenssen a few weeks to design the current two sets, one with a 61-page instruction manual. Your only compensation is a copy of each model. Employees only. The sales policy is one unit per person and verified ASML email is mandatory. For weeks, some fans managed to place orders bypassing that restriction due to a security hole in networks, and measures had to be taken: in December 2024 ASML began canceling orders from buyers without an actual corporate email. The EXE:5000 file even disappeared and can only be consulted today through the Wayback Machine. The same corporate email restriction covers the rest of the merchandising of the company, yes, much less coveted: sweaters, mugs, pins and Christmas decorations. eBay fever. Of course, speculation was not long in coming, as It usually happens with Lego sets that disappear from the market. Individual sets of those designed by Lenssen have been seen for $600, while the complete collection reaches $4,500. Before closing that section of the store, ASML sold 1,355 units of the latest model (there are 44,000 company employees, possibly not all of them interested in building with toy blocks). Although the comparison is absurd, only six of the real machine have been sold. In Xataka | The great fear of the US is that ASML’s UVP machines will continue to arrive in China. So he is going to intensify his trade war

has found a way to block the technological development of ASML

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China seems to be very clear what should you do to emerge victorious from the dispute it is having with the US in the crucial semiconductor scenario. Without 100% Chinese advanced chips its military capacity, the development of its models of artificial intelligence (AI) and the competitiveness of its technology companies will suffer in the medium term. At this juncture you need to develop your own teams of extreme ultraviolet photolithography (UVE), which are the appropriate machines to manufacture cutting-edge integrated circuits, as soon as possible. But getting them ready is not easy at all. Engineers from some Chinese companies, such as Huawei, SMIC or SMEE, and researchers from various scientific institutions, such as Tsinghua University or the Chinese Academy of Sciences, are combining reverse engineering techniques applied to computer equipment. deep ultraviolet photolithography (UVP) of ASML that has in its possession and innovations devised by themselves. It is the logical path. However, that are using reverse engineering It does not imply that we should conclude that they only know how to “copy.” China’s innovation capacity is, objectively, beyond doubt. China is filing critical patents to protect itself and weaken ASML So far this March, Huawei, SMEE and Tsinghua University, among other Chinese entities, have registered an unusually high volume of patents linked to the development of photolithography equipment. What China intends is, above all, to protect its intellectual property. But the nature of some of his latest patents reflects that he also pursues block ASML and some of its essential suppliers, such as ZEISS or TRUMPF. And it is doing so by registering patents directly linked to the next generation of photolithography equipment, so it is taking ownership of the path that ASML will have to travel in the future. Several of these critical patents describe fundamental innovations about SSMB-UVE technology. Several of these critical patents have been registered by Tsinghua University and describe fundamental innovations about technology SSMB-UVE (Steady-State Micro-Bunching-UVE), which we can translate as Microclustering in steady state for the generation of UVE radiation. This technology seeks to generate this radiation that is so important for produce advanced chips using a synchrotronwhich is nothing more than a circular particle accelerator that is used to analyze the properties of matter at the atomic level. One of the patents registered by this Chinese research center describes how electrons can be organized in a particle accelerator to ensure that they emit coherent light with a wavelength of 13.5 nm. If over the next decade the semiconductor industry decides that laser vaporization of tin droplets, which is the technique ASML is usinghas reached its thermal limit and accelerators represent the only way to reach the 1,000 watts of power necessary to implement Hyper-NA technologyChina will have the upper hand. However, this is not just about particle accelerators. Huawei and SiCarrier have registered several patents dedicated to UVE radiation interference lithography already LDP type ultraviolet light sources (laser induced discharge). One of these critical patents describes an innovation that uses interferometry to generate nanometer-resolution patterns. without depending on the very complex ZEISS lenses. If at some point technological development takes ASML, ZEISS or any other Western company down this path they will have to pay the Chinese entities, negotiate an exchange of intellectual properties or develop your own alternative innovations. And doing so is not easy. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini In Xataka | TSMC acknowledges that it has considered taking its factories out of Taiwan. It’s impossible for a good reason. In Xataka | The looming bottleneck in AI is neither RAM nor gas: it’s that TSMC’s N3 node is absolutely saturated

China claims that having its own ASML is not that difficult. At the end of the day “ASML is a simple integrator”

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China is advancing at a fearsome speed, but they are their own critics. A group of scientists and industry representatives has published an analysis very critical in which they describe their semiconductor industry as “small, dispersed and weak.” For these experts, the problem is that they do not have their own ASML, so they propose creating one, and the curious thing about it is precisely that: that they do not see it as difficult to do. Not authors, authorities. Among the authors of the study are Wang Yangyuan —co-founder of SMIC— or Chen Nanxiang —director of the YMTC NAND chip manufacturer—. Both they and the rest of the participants are recognized personalities in the field of semiconductors. That makes it clear that this articlepublished in the magazine Science and Technology Review China is valuable to understand the state of this industry. The US veto works. This article indicates that the United States has managed to contain China’s advance in three areas: electronic design automation (EDA) used in chip design, the manufacture of silicon wafers, and the creation of chip manufacturing equipment, especially those with extreme ultraviolet (UVE) photolithographic technologya segment that is absolutely dominated by the Dutch ASML and that China has not yet managed to match despite its efforts. There are many companies, but they are too small. The study analyzes in depth the situation of the Chinese semiconductor market, which they describe as small, dispersed and weak. And to prove it they give a significant fact: there are 3,626 domestic chip design companies in China, but “the total value of the industry’s output was 646 billion yuan (approximately 91 billion dollars). In other words: the total sales of these 3,626 companies were less than the sales of NVIDIA alone.” Smartphone chips are doing well. Of course, these experts point out that several Chinese companies have managed to reach “the world’s leading edge” in terms of chips for smartphones. They mention HiSilicon Semiconductor and Unisoc, which occupy the first and second place among the largest smartphone chip designers in China, with market shares of 20 and 10% respectively. And the “mature” chips, too. Something similar happens with chips with much more mature technologies, such as those manufactured with 28 nm photolithography or higher. That problem is already solved in China, which does not have to depend so much on foreign manufacturers. In fact, China now represents 33% of global production in this segment, and design and manufacturing processes are not limited by internal restrictions. Too dependent. Despite its many advances, China remains the world’s largest importer of integrated circuits. It invested $385.79 billion in 2024 in these components, even exceeding its oil imports ($324.7 billion). Here China has a big problem of dependence on chips from third-party foreign manufacturers, and this is especially noticeable in automotive chips (95% of them import) and memory chips (90%): all of them depend on imports. There is a clear bottleneck in high-end integrated circuit production. In search of Chinese ASML. The document also addresses competition with ASML but not as a direct commercial rivalry, but as a strategic challenge of technological sovereignty. The Dutch company is described as “a simple integrator” that coordinates more than 5,000 suppliers to manage the 10,000 components of an EUV machine. The suggestion of the study is precisely to create a Chinese ASML that unifies the advances made by different companies. But. Although progress has been made In this ambitious objective of creating SVU machines, “integrating them with a national effort is a problem that must be resolved during the 15th five-year plan” that concludes in 2030. To do this, these experts assure, there must be financial support and human personnel is required. We already knew that China I was trying to copy ASMLbut for now it is going badly. The document talks about developments such as promising Flip-FET technology (FFET) of Peking University. This advance allows us to reach 3-2 nm nodes without depending exclusively on EUV machines, but it remains to be seen if this method ends up being successful or not. In Xataka | Holland has just declared war on China in the most important battle of the century: control of semiconductors

Everyone wants to take away ASML’s throne. Today ASML has decided that the throne is higher

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A team of researchers from ASML They claim to have discovered a way to increase the power of the light source used in their chip production machines. According to their conclusions, this technology would allow chip production to increase by 50% in 2030. Good news for ASML, very bad for its rivals in China and the US. 1,000 watts. Michael Purvis, the ASML engineer who led the research, explained in Reuters that “It’s not a parlor trick or anything like that. We demonstrated for a very short time that it can work. It’s a system that can produce 1000 watts with the same requirements that you might see on a customer.” An almost miraculous process. In its UVE machines ASML needs to create an extremely energetic ultraviolet light. They use a wavelength of only 13.5 nanometers, but to achieve this light the process is exquisitely complex: Microdroplets of molten tin the size of a fraction of a human hair are launched through a vacuum chamber These drops fall one after the other, more than 100,000 times per second A giant carbon dioxide laser shoots at each droplet The impact turns the tin into a very hot gas (plasma) that even exceeds the temperature of the sun. Plasma emits EUV radiation Ultra-precision mirrors manufactured by Zeiss collect that light and direct it toward the chip And it is with that light that the circuits are “drawn” on the silicon wafer with atomic precision Tech drops. What they achieve with the new system is to double the frequency of the tin drops, going to 100,000 per second, which allows more light to be generated. They also use two previous laser pulses instead of one: the first shapes the drop and prepares it. The second converts it into plasma more efficiently. More chips than ever. Currently, the machines UVE photolithography (Extreme UltraViolet) from ASML work with a power of 600 watts. This achievement would allow a 50% increase in the yield or percentage of functional chips obtained from a wafer. It is crucial to turning ASML’s chip production systems into true precision machines. wafers to me. Teun van Gogh, responsible for ASML’s NXE line of EUV machines, indicated in Reuters that the company’s intention is to make it possible for them to use this technology in a much more affordable way. If everything goes as expected, machines that take advantage of this technology will be able to process 330 silicon wafers every hour, instead of the current 220 wafers. The US tries to compete. In the United States, at least two startups, Substrate and xLight, have managed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to develop machines that compete with those of ASML. Substrate is working in an x-ray based projectwhile xLight —led by Pat Gelsinger and with investment from the US Government— wants to use particle accelerators. And China, of course, too. China takes years trying to create machines like ASML, but so far it doesn’t seem to be succeeding. There is now talk that China has its “Manhattan Project” in this area and it seems to be closer to get your own machine with UVE technology. ASML was already leading. Now it does it even more. In both cases, the reality is clear: today ASML still has no competition. It is the master of the world in this segment, and if you want to manufacture the most advanced chips on the market, you need its machines. This new advance promises to further open the gap with its competitors, who do not have machines that can compete with ASML’s current ones… and who will have even more difficulty having those that can compete with this new advance. The future. Purvis added that this new technique could be improved in the future: “we see a reasonably clear path to 1,500 watts, and there is no fundamental reason why we cannot reach 2,000 watts.” If true, ASML could hold the key to continuing to lead this market for even longer… if rivals fail to turn the tables. And it seems complicated that they do it. Image | ASML In Xataka | Global tension cannot withstand ASML. He is going to build a huge campus equivalent to 50 football fields

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