ASML rides Nvidia’s coattails with lasers and huge chip ‘printers’

By Toby Sterling and Nathan Vifflin

As artificial intelligence firms jostle for the Nvidia chips needed to power the AI boom, Dutch firm ASML has carved out a key niche in the supply chain: building the laser-using machines needed to print them.

ASML, which counts Taiwan’s TSMC and Intel  amongst its clients, makes the huge precision machines needed to print the minuscule circuitry onto silicon chips, dominating the market for the high-end microprocessors needed for AI.

The Veldhoven, Netherlands-based company has seen its shares double in value since last April and rise 25% this month alone amid signs that its chipmaker clients are ramping up investment as a supply crunch pushes up chip prices.

Now investors are watching whether the firm ups its forecasts for flat-to-modest sales growth in 2026 when it reports earnings on Wednesday, analysts said.

Analysts have been upgrading estimates as the stock races ahead, with new forecasts significantly above the company’s guidance.

A monopoly on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology has helped the firm ride the coattails of chip design giant Nvidia amid a global AI arms race that has created trillions of dollars in value.

ASML is “the only game in town,” said John West of semiconductor consultancy Yole Group, referring to EUV, which uses light beams just 13.5 nanometers thick – minuscule, given a human hair is around 80,000–100,000 nanometers across.

The firm will also update its plans to ramp up the number of machines it can make.

Demand for ASML’s high-tech tools has made the firm Europe’s most valuable listed company with a market cap recently topping $500 billion.

ASML controls some 90% of the market for lithography systems, analysts estimate, due to its high-throughput machines. It is the only maker of EUV technology, in which drops of tin are vaporized with lasers 50,000 times a second to create the light.

Demand for AI-linked cloud services boomed in 2025 and a related shortage of memory chips has started to push up prices for smartphones, computers and gaming consoles.

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Source: www.reuters.com