When using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, you indirectly rely on the 42-year-old Dutch company ASML, which has 44,000 employees and invests 4.5 billion euros annually. ASML is the only company that manufactures the EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) equipment necessary to produce the world's most advanced semiconductors. This is reported by Techcrunch.com reports .
These complex machines, the size of a bus, cost between 200 million and 400 million dollars. As giants like Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google allocate over 600 billion dollars to AI infrastructure, the demand for ASML equipment has surged. The company openly admits that the market will face chip shortages in the coming years.
Its monopoly position in the market has made ASML the most valuable company in Europe. Nevertheless, the company has become a target for competitors. The San Francisco-based startup Substrate has been valued at over 1 billion dollars, claiming it will create a competitive lithography machine. Additionally, there are attempts in China to master ASML technologies through reverse engineering.
ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet admitted that he did not foresee the AI boom. According to him, AI is becoming not just an industrial, but a social revolution. Fouquet calmly answered questions about competitors, emphasizing that the company is working on expanding its supply chain, but the chip shortage problem will persist for the next 3-5 years.
Read “Zamin” on Telegram!
