ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet on his company's monopoly: no one is coming for us

ASML produces the only machines capable of extreme ultraviolet lithography for the most advanced semiconductors. The systems cost between $200 million and more than $400 million each. The company has become the most valuable in Europe with a value exceeding $530 billion. Chief Executive Christophe Fouquet said demand tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure spending has left the overall chip market supply-limited for years. Hyperscalers will not receive enough chips for the next two to five years, he added. The company must increase supply chain capacity to match, he said. Substrate, a San Francisco startup, raised more than $100 million and reached a valuation above $1 billion on claims that it can build a rival lithography machine. Fouquet said the challenges include producing images at high volume, low cost, high speed and nanometer accuracy. He noted that ASML relied on decades of prior products and spent 20 years developing its light source alone. Reports indicate former ASML engineers in China have partly reverse-engineered the technology. Fouquet said no EUV machines have been shipped to China and that the company maintains strict internal separation of technology access. He added that facts show little to no progress. Fouquet agreed with Jensen Huang that companies should maintain a generation gap in products sold to certain markets. ASML ships tools to China first introduced in 2015, an eight-generation difference from current systems. He described the dialogue with the current administration as good and important.