ASML chief: ‘There is only one company making those machines’

Monday interview with ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet in Veldhoven: Europe’s biggest company (~€591bn market value; shares +88% over the past year) holds a total monopoly on extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines essential for advanced AI chips, on top of an extraordinary share of broader lithography. Fouquet credits “extreme co-operation” with customers and a ~200-principal / ~2,000-company supply chain (EUV tool >100,000 parts; ~$400mn per machine) rather than US-style bravado — and says customers once asked whether a single supplier was acceptable, but the learning/investment/time to create a rival is prohibitive. He resists shareholder pressure to lever up and juice margins: profit should grow with the industry, not “abuse the situation”; capacity is gated by supply-chain complexity, not a few billion of extra cash. On export controls, he warns over-restriction spurred Chinese DUV progress (Huawei) and creates “desperation” that accelerates competitors — a message he directs at Dutch/EU decision-makers, not only Trump. On the AI bubble question he is calm: markets are jittery, but he sees a 10–15 year AI effect, with EUV evolving via stacked transistors and larger mirror apertures; humanoids and space tech excite him more than near-term fusion commercialisation, which he says lacks the concentrated belief that drove EUV.