VELDHOVEN — In a cleanroom the size of several football fields on the edge of Eindhoven, the world's most important machine is assembled from nearly half a million parts, aligned to tolerances measured in picometers, and shipped in twenty freight containers to a handful of buyers.
The machine prints the transistors inside nearly every advanced chip on earth. Only one company knows how to build it. That company is ASML Holding N.V., and its extreme-ultraviolet lithography scanners have become the decisive choke point of the global technology order — courted by presidents, sanctioned by bureaucrats, stolen by spies, and subsidized on a scale usually reserved for armies.
Corporate filings, export-licensing records, court judgments, and parliamentary letters reveal a reality stranger than the usual "chip war" shorthand.
ASML is not merely a beneficiary of great-power competition. It is a co-funded monopoly — bankrolled by its own customers, fused to a single German optics supplier, anchored by a small Dutch town's housing supply — that now decides, one license at a time, which countries are allowed to manufacture the future.
Table of Contents
The shed that ate the industry
The monopoly began in a leaky shed.
On April 1, 1984, electronics giant Philips and wafer-equipment maker ASM International (ASMI) — founded in 1968 by Arthur H. del Prado — formed a joint venture called ASM Lithography. The goal was modest: commercialize Philips' PAS 2000 wafer stepper, a machine born of 1970s optics research inside Philips' Eindhoven labs.
The venture started in Philips' Strijp TQ building in Eindhoven and moved to Veldhoven in 1985 with about 100 employees. ASMI withdrew in 1988. The company went independent that year under the name ASML, broke through commercially with the PAS 5500 in 1991, and listed in Amsterdam and New York on March 15, 1995. Philips sold half its stake at the IPO and the rest in the years after.
One founding engineer never left. Martin van den Brink joined in 1984, became vice president of technology in 1995, joined the board in 1999, and ran the technology roadmap as president and chief technology officer until his retirement on April 24, 2024 — the day the CTO role itself was abolished.
Three decades later the shed is a campus. ASML reported 2023 net sales of €27.6 billion and net income of €7.8 billion, 2024 sales of €28.3 billion, and 2025 sales of €32.7 billion with net income of €9.6 billion. Headcount passed 44,000. The company sits in the AEX and the Nasdaq-100, widely held with no controlling shareholder — BlackRock at about 7.2 percent, Vanguard near 3.9 percent, Norges Bank Investment Management around 2.3 percent, plus FMR, Capital Group, Fisher, and Amundi.
Leadership turned over in 2024. Peter Wennink, chief financial officer turned chief executive (2013–2024), retired alongside van den Brink. The new president and CEO is Christophe Fouquet, a French engineer who joined in 2008, ran the EUV business from 2018 to 2022, and served as chief business officer before taking the top job on April 25, 2024. Beside him sit CFO Roger Dassen (ex-Deloitte), COO Frédéric Schneider-Maunoury, sourcing chief Wayne Allan, customer chief Jim Koonmen — himself an artifact of acquisition, having joined through Brion in 2007 — and incoming CTO Marco Pieters. The supervisory board is chaired by Nils Smedegaard Andersen, the former Maersk and Carlsberg chief, with vice-chair Terri Kelly and members including ex-Micron chief D. Mark Durcan and ex-Rolls-Royce chief Warren East.
Founding and leadership connections
flowchart TD
accTitle: Founding and leadership relationships
accDescr: Joint-venture origins, IPO sell-down, and CEO succession described in the article. Connections do not by themselves establish coordinated decisions.
Philips["Philips"] -->|Co-founded 1984| ASML["ASM Lithography / ASML"]
ASMI["ASM International<br/>Arthur del Prado"] -->|Co-founded 1984; exited 1988| ASML
ASML -->|IPO March 15, 1995| Public["Amsterdam + New York listing"]
Philips -.->|Sold down after IPO| Public
Dunn["Doug Dunn<br/>CEO 2000-2004"] -->|Succeeded by| Meurice["Eric Meurice<br/>CEO 2004-2013"]
Meurice -->|Succeeded by| Wennink["Peter Wennink<br/>CEO 2013-2024"]
Wennink -->|Succeeded April 2024| Fouquet["Christophe Fouquet<br/>CEO from 2024"]
Brink["Martin van den Brink<br/>Joined 1984; CTO to 2024"] -->|Roadmap to| Fouquet
Andersen["Nils Smedegaard Andersen<br/>Supervisory chair from 2023"] -->|Chairs| ASML
Edges identify the relationships stated in the article; they do not independently establish coordination.
Three checks that bought a monopoly
ASML's dominance was not an accident of engineering alone. It was purchased — by its own customers.
On July 9, 2012, ASML announced the Customer Co-Investment Program: it would sell up to a 25 percent minority stake to fund two bets — extreme-ultraviolet lithography and 450mm wafers. Intel signed first: a 15 percent stake for €2.5 billion plus €829 million in R&D. TSMC followed on August 5: 5 percent for €838 million plus €277 million in R&D. Samsung closed the program on August 27: 3 percent for €503 million plus €276 million in R&D. In total, 23 percent of the company for €3.85 billion in cash plus €1.38 billion in research money, approved by shareholders on September 7, 2012, with a synthetic buyback returning cash to everyone else.
The money finished what physics started. ASML acquired Silicon Valley Group in 2001 (Wilton, Connecticut, now a major R&D site), computational-lithography pioneer Brion in 2007 (the start of "holistic lithography"), San Diego light-source maker Cymer — announced October 2012 at €1.95 billion, closed May 2013 — Taiwanese e-beam inspection leader Hermes Microvision — announced June 2016 at roughly TWD 100 billion, closed November 2016 — and Berliner Glas in November 2020, a thirty-year supplier of ceramics and wafer tables with more than 1,600 staff. When Delft startup Mapper collapsed in 2018, ASML bought the IP and hired the engineers.
The co-investment loop
flowchart TD
accTitle: Customer funding and acquisitions described in the article
accDescr: Equity and R&D flows of the 2012 program and subsequent acquisitions. Amounts are the article's figures, not additive totals.
Intel["Intel"] -->|15% · €2,513M + €829M R&D| ASML["ASML"]
TSMC["TSMC"] -->|5% · €838M + €277M R&D| ASML
Samsung["Samsung"] -->|3% · €503M + €276M R&D| ASML
ASML -->|€1.95B · 2013| Cymer["Cymer<br/>Light sources"]
ASML -->|~TWD 100B · 2016| HMI["Hermes Microvision<br/>E-beam inspection"]
ASML -->|24.9% · €1B + €760M · 2016| Zeiss["Carl Zeiss SMT<br/>Optics"]
ASML -->|2020| Berliner["Berliner Glas<br/>Ceramics + tables"]
ASML -->|2007| Brion["Brion<br/>Computational litho"]
Amounts and relationships are those stated in the article.
The most important deal was the one that was not an acquisition. On November 3, 2016, ASML bought 24.9 percent of Carl Zeiss SMT of Oberkochen, Germany, for €1.0 billion in cash, pledging roughly €760 million more in R&D and supply-chain support over six years. Zeiss had been the optics partner since 1986. It makes every lens and mirror in every EUV and deep-ultraviolet scanner ASML sells. The stake locked in the high-numerical-aperture future — 0.55 NA optics for sub-3-nanometer printing — while keeping Zeiss SMT inside the ZEISS Group.
Around that dyad orbits a precision archipelago: TRUMPF of Ditzingen, co-developing the carbon-dioxide drive laser since 2005 — a 20-ton machine that vaporizes 50,000 tin droplets per second to produce 13.5-nanometer light, with series production of its successor from 2026; VDL Enabling Technologies Group, Neways Electronics (a 35-year wiring partner, renewed January 2023), NTS Group, and KMWE in the Brainport high-mix supply chain; Tokyo Electron, whose coater-developer tracks run inline with every EUV scanner; and Lasertec of Yokohama, whose actinic inspection tools check the masks that ASML scanners print — a complement, not a supplier, and a reminder that even monopolies have neighbors.
The customer map is the power map
ASML is the sole EUV vendor on earth. A low-NA EUV tool costs roughly €170–200 million. A high-NA EXE:5000 costs about €350 million. An argon-fluoride immersion DUV tool costs around $82.5 million. Who gets which machine is geopolitics by invoice.
TSMC is the largest customer — roughly a third of revenue in peak years — printing 7-nanometer and below, then 3- and 2-nanometer, on EUV. Samsung buys for memory and foundry, committing to high-NA for DRAM in 2028. SK Hynix and Micron buy for DRAM and NAND, including high-bandwidth memory. UMC and GlobalFoundries buy DUV for mature nodes.
Intel bought the future first. It ordered high-NA early, received the first EXE:5000 on December 21, 2023 in Oregon, integrated it by April 2024, took a second machine that month, and by September 2026 had exposed a million wafers for its 18A process. TSMC took a high-NA research tool in late 2024 in Hsinchu but deferred volume adoption toward 2029–2030, sticking with low-NA multipatterning. In September 2026 the two companies announced a joint pilot for large-format photomasks for high-NA.
China is the exception that proves the rule. SMIC ordered EUV in 2018 and never received it. Roughly 1,400 older ASML tools sit in China, but every EUV sale has required a license since 2019, and none has been granted. China was 46 percent of ASML sales in the third quarter of 2023 — a stockpiling spike — and is guided at about 20 percent for 2025, with a sharp decline expected in 2026.
Supply chain and customer connections
flowchart TD
accTitle: Supply chain and customer relationships
accDescr: Supplier, research, and customer links described in the article. Commercial ties do not imply control over licensing decisions.
Zeiss["Carl Zeiss SMT"] -->|All EUV/DUV optics| ASML["ASML"]
Trumpf["TRUMPF"] -->|CO2 drive laser| ASML
VDL["VDL · Neways · NTS · KMWE"] -->|Precision modules| ASML
TEL["Tokyo Electron"] -->|Inline track| ASML
ASML -->|EUV + DUV| TSMC["TSMC<br/>Largest customer"]
ASML -->|EUV + DUV| Samsung["Samsung"]
ASML -->|First High-NA Dec 2023| Intel["Intel"]
ASML -->|EUV + DUV| Hynix["SK Hynix · Micron"]
ASML -->|DUV only · EUV never shipped| SMIC["SMIC"]
ASML ---|Research| imec["imec · TU Eindhoven<br/>High-NA Lab Jun 2024"]
Commercial ties summarize the article's account; licensing decisions sit with governments.
The research base is deliberately local. The joint ASML–imec High-NA lab opened in Veldhoven on June 3, 2024 around a prototype EXE:5000. TU Eindhoven signed a ten-year roadmap in April 2023 with an ASML cleanroom on campus. TNO, its Holst Centre with imec, the ARCNL plasma lab (2014, with the universities of Amsterdam), and Fraunhofer fill out the science layer. SEMI, the SIA, ESIA, AENEAS (€110,000–133,000 a year from ASML), and the European Round Table for Industry carry the advocacy. Home is Brainport Eindhoven — ASML, NXP, Philips, VDL, the High Tech Campus — where ASML's 24,000 Dutch staff anchor two-and-a-half times as many ecosystem jobs.
The licensing queue
The machine became a weapon the moment Washington decided it was one.
In 2018, after a Dutch license for a roughly $150 million EUV tool for SMIC was sought, the Trump administration pressed The Hague to stop it, according to two sources and a former U.S. official cited by Reuters. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lobbied Prime Minister Mark Rutte in June 2019; Deputy National Security Adviser Charles Kupperman handed Rutte a classified briefing that July. The license expired unused on June 30, 2019. ASML states flatly that EUV sales to China have been restricted since 2019. No EUV tool has ever shipped there.
What followed was a ratchet, each click documented in public records:
On December 18, 2020, the Bureau of Industry and Security placed SMIC on the Entity List for military-civil fusion. On October 7, 2022, BIS issued sweeping controls — new computing and manufacturing thresholds, expanded foreign-direct-product rules, and a ban on U.S.-person support. In January 2023, Bloomberg and The New York Times reported that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had hosted Dutch and Japanese officials in Washington toward a three-way deal: the Netherlands would curb immersion DUV, Japan would mirror it through Nikon and Tokyo Electron. No communique was ever published; ASML confirmed only that "steps have been made towards an agreement." The episode should be read as reported diplomacy, not treaty.
On March 8, 2023, minister Liesje Schreinemacher wrote parliament that the Netherlands would add the most advanced DUV immersion tools to its national control list. The regulation took effect September 1, 2023, covering the NXT:2000i and later. Japan's METI announced 23 controlled equipment types on March 31, 2023, effective July 23. After an October 2023 U.S. update, the Netherlands partially revoked 2023 licenses for the NXT:2050i and 2100i to a small number of Chinese customers effective January 1, 2024 — days after Bloomberg reported a pre-deadline American request. On September 6, 2024, minister Reinette Klever extended licensing to the NXT:1970i and 1980i. On December 2, 2024, BIS fired its largest package yet: 24 equipment types, software and high-bandwidth-memory controls, a new Footnote 5 direct-product rule, and 140 Entity List additions. ASML said the hit fell within its €30–35 billion 2025 outlook, with China at roughly a fifth.
The article's export-control ratchet
flowchart TD
accTitle: Export-control sequence described in the article
accDescr: Verified licensing actions are solid arrows; the January 2023 understanding is reported diplomacy without a published communique.
Block["EUV blocked · license expires Jun 2019"] --> SMIC["SMIC Entity Listed<br/>Dec 2020"]
SMIC --> Oct7["U.S. Oct 7 controls<br/>Oct 2022"]
Oct7 -.->|Reported · no communique| Deal["Washington understanding<br/>Jan 2023"]
Deal --> DUV["Dutch DUV licensing<br/>Sep 2023 · NXT:2000i+"]
DUV --> Revoke["Partial revocation<br/>Jan 2024 · 2050i/2100i"]
Revoke --> Expand["Dutch expansion<br/>Sep 2024 · 1970i/1980i"]
Expand --> Pack["U.S. Dec 2024 package<br/>24 types + Footnote 5"]
Pack -.->|Retaliation| Minerals["Chinese mineral controls<br/>Ga/Ge/Sb 2023-2024"]
Solid arrows are verified licensing actions; dashed arrows are reported or retaliatory links.
Beijing answered with rocks. MOFCOM imposed gallium and germanium licensing in August 2023, graphite controls that October, and — the day after the December 2024 BIS package — banned gallium, germanium, and antimony exports to the United States, later suspended in November 2025. ASML's finance chief warned in October 2025 that inventories and alternatives covered the near term but the three-year supply risk was real.
The hinge event came in August 2023, mid-visit by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to Beijing: Huawei's Mate 60 Pro went on sale with a Kirin 9000s processor that Ottawa teardown lab TechInsights identified for Bloomberg as SMIC N+2 7-nanometer — made without EUV, through painstaking DUV multipatterning. The message landed: constraints bite, but they also teach.
Under Secretary Alan Estevez flew to The Hague in April 2024 to press for a servicing halt and a wider fab list, Reuters reported; Prime Minister Dick Schoof, in office since July 2024, weighed the maintenance-license renewals expiring that December. The logic voiced by ASML finance chief Roger Dassen cut both ways: keeping engineers inside Chinese fabs preserves visibility — and revenue. Cutting them off accelerates the indigenous alternative: Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment, Naura, and nanoimprint challengers.
Stolen light and smuggled spares
A machine this valuable gets stolen. Twice, the paper trail shows how.
On November 5, 2016, ASML's Brion subsidiary sued XTAL Inc. in Santa Clara Superior Court. Six former Brion engineers had taken two million lines of optical-proximity-correction source code to a 2014 startup founded by ex-ASML engineer Zongchang Yu, funded through Chinese and Korean channels, twinned with Beijing's Dongfang Jingyuan a month apart. A jury found inducement, theft, and malice in November 2018; final judgment on May 3, 2019 was $845 million plus an injunction. Criminal charges followed that April. XTAL went bankrupt in December 2018 and its IP went to ASML. Dongfang nonetheless raised $140 million in December 2022 — the enforcement gap in miniature. Georgetown's CSET later traced the fugitive engineer thriving in China.
On February 15, 2023, ASML disclosed that a former employee in China had misappropriated data from a shared repository, possibly violating export controls. Bloomberg described repository theft; the NRC later reported the employee went to Huawei. ASML and the ministry declined detail. The allegation remains exactly that — an allegation with a disclosed core and an unattributed periphery.
The Russian file is more concrete. Despite sanctions, more than 170 shipments of PAS 5500 spares — a 1990s-vintage platform, never cutting-edge but usable for analog and military-adjacent parts — reached Russia in 2022–2023 via Chinese proxies, according to customs records reported by Trouw and Reuters. Separately, German Aksenov, a former Mapper–ASML–NXP staffer, was arrested on August 28, 2024, and convicted in Rotterdam on July 10, 2025: three years for sanctions breach, USB drives and a Signal channel to an FSB-linked contact, microchip-line setup documents. Mapper's own backstory closes the loop: ASML bought it out of bankruptcy in 2019 for a reported €75 million, outbidding Russian and Chinese suitors.
Nikon — the only other argon-fluoride vendor, dominant in the 1980s, out of EUV since 2008 — fought the monopoly the old-fashioned way: in court. It sued in December 2001 across the ITC, California, Tokyo, and Korea; settled in September 2004 with ASML paying $87 million and Zeiss SMT $58 million plus a cross-license running to 2009 (non-assert to 2014). It sued again in April 2017 over eleven patents; ASML countersued over ten-plus. They settled in January–February 2019. Now Nikon promises a cheaper ArF immersion platform for fiscal 2028 and Canon ships a nanoimprint tool — 14-nanometer claims, no optics, low power, first delivery to Texas in 2024 — both controlled for China.
The €2.5 billion promise to stay
In March 2024, the Dutch state showed what the monopoly is worth at home.
After Shell and Unilever left and ASML and NXP murmured about following — citing grid, housing, talent, and taxes — the caretaker cabinet unveiled "Project Beethoven" on March 28: €2.51 billion for Brainport Eindhoven and national chip talent to 2030. The Hague put up €1.73 billion including €1.28 billion from the National Growth Fund plus €450 million for technical education; the region added €780 million. Over a billion goes to rail, buses, and roads around Eindhoven Centraal and the De Run industrial zone; €425 million to 20,000 extra homes; sustained funding to TU/e, Fontys, and technical colleges under the "Talent for Semicon" banner. The condition was printed in the press release: the cabinet assumes ASML keeps investing in the Netherlands and retains its statutory, tax, and actual headquarters there. In December 2024 the companies answered with a ~$230 million corporate infrastructure fund.
In Brussels, the ledger is longer. ASML's February 2022 position paper backed the EU Chips Act — in force September 2023, targeting 20 percent of world capacity by 2030 — while warning that an "uneconomical top" for advanced fabs needs sustained public money and that a Europe-only value chain is fantasy in a mutual-dependency industry. The Commission approved the IPCEI microelectronics program in June 2023: up to €8.1 billion across fourteen states, 68 projects, 56 companies including ASML, Airbus, and Ericsson, meant to unlock €13.7 billion private. ASML's declared EU lobbying ran €300,000–400,000 in 2022 and €200,000–300,000 in 2025, with meetings logged to DG GROW chief Kerstin Jorna, Commissioner Thierry Breton's cabinet, and President von der Leyen's cabinet on the Chips Act, sovereignty, sanctions, and export controls. Its Global Advocacy Report puts total 2025 advocacy spending at €1.77 million. The company states it makes no political contributions. Its U.S. arm is Lobbying Disclosure Act-registered; its German arm sits in the Bundestag register.
The Washington think-tank layer — CSIS tracking the deal's Wassenaar workaround, CSET translating the Japanese controls, RAND, ASPI, MERICS, Clingendael, and the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies debating the squeeze — supplies the vocabulary in which the licensing queue is argued. What it does not supply is detachment: in Leiden, researcher Sanne van der Lugt observed that controls had created the business case for a Chinese lithography industry that did not previously exist.
That is the paradox the files leave behind. Every license denied is a lesson taught. Every spare withheld is a startup funded. The shed in Veldhoven still builds the only machine that matters — and every attempt to decide who may buy it hastens the day when someone else learns to build one.
Corporate roles and scrutiny paths summarize documented records; allegations attributed to single outlets are identified as reported. No liability finding beyond the cited judgments is implied.