ASML is the only commercial supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems, the machines at the heart of the modern semiconductor industry. An EUV system is roughly the size of a double-decker bus, weighs about 180 tonnes and costs more than €180 million. It fires lasers at tens of thousands of microscopic droplets of molten tin every second, creating a plasma that emits light at a wavelength of 13.5 nanometres, which is used to print the fine patterns from which the most advanced computer chips are made.
In 2025, ASML recognised revenue from 48 EUV systems and generated €32.7 billion of sales overall, including €8.2 billion from servicing and upgrading its installed base. The Dutch company coordinates a network of specialist suppliers rather than making every component itself. German company Carl Zeiss makes the mirrors at the heart of the optical system, Trumpf supplies the lasers used to generate the EUV light, and other specialists provide components ranging from wafer stages to sensors and software.
Its customers include TSMC, Samsung and Intel. When it comes to leading-edge lithography, they have little choice but to buy from ASML. The machines are expensive because the economic cost of falling behind in semiconductor manufacturing is greater still.
ASML was established in 1984 as a joint venture between Philips and ASM International. It entered a competitive market dominated by established American and Japanese companies, initially had few customers and struggled financially. ASM International eventually withdrew after struggling to justify continued investment, while Philips was cutting costs. ASML survived because its management and shareholders continued to back the technology and because Philips provided further support.
The company spent its first decade building the business and developing its technology, working with specialist suppliers and concentrating on integrating their technologies into a complete lithography system. The breakthrough came in the 1990s with the PAS 5500, whose productivity and resolution helped ASML win the customers it needed to become profitable. The company went public in 1995.
EUV had been discussed for years as the technology that might allow chipmakers to keep shrinking transistors, but turning the idea into a machine capable of high-volume production proved difficult. ASML and its customers spent years developing the technology, with Intel, Samsung and TSMC helping to fund the effort. In 2012, those customers committed €1.38 billion of research and development funding to ASML's next-generation lithography programme and took minority stakes in the company. Intel alone committed €829 million of R&D funding alongside an investment of up to 15% in ASML.
That combination of technology, expertise and relationships forms ASML's competitive moat. A cutting-edge fabrication plant can cost more than $20 billion to build and equip, with lithography scanners among the most expensive tools inside it. Smaller transistors allow more computing power to be packed onto each wafer, while higher throughput and better yield improve the economics of the plant. The return from a lithography investment therefore depends on the additional output and yield it enables, rather than simply on the purchase price.