The $250 million ASML "printer" that powers Nvidia's chips: Everything you should know

Explainer: The Technology Powering ASML’s Rise to Europe’s Most Valuable Company

ASML has become Europe’s most valuable company, driven by its dominance in lithography systems — massive “chip-printing” machines that cost about $250 million each and are essential to producing the advanced semiconductors powering the artificial intelligence boom.

At the heart of ASML’s success is its monopoly on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, a technology no other company has yet been able to commercialise at scale.

What’s driving demand?

ASML is the sole supplier of EUV machines used to manufacture the most advanced chips, even as rivals in China and the United States attempt to develop alternatives. Explosive growth in AI, alongside a global expansion of data centres, has sharply increased demand for cutting-edge semiconductors.

Supplying chipmakers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) — which produces AI chips for Nvidia — as well as Samsung, SK Hynix, Intel and others, has become ASML’s core business.

The technology: Massive machines working at the nanoscale

Each EUV machine is roughly the size of a school bus, weighs about 150 tonnes, and uses a highly complex system of lasers, mirrors and magnets to etch microscopic circuitry onto silicon wafers.

The machines project patterns of light onto wafers, each of which can contain around 100 AI chips, enabling chipmakers to create multiple layers of circuitry with unprecedented precision.

EUV lithography uses light with a wavelength of just 13 nanometres. By comparison, a human hair is between 80,000 and 100,000 nanometres thick.

“These systems offer the patterning precision, scalability and energy efficiency that advanced chip manufacturing — and AI chips in particular — depend on,” said Luc Van den Hove, chief executive of Belgium’s Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), which collaborated with ASML in developing the technology.

Lasers, mirrors and extreme precision

To generate EUV light, droplets of tin are fired 50,000 times per second and hit by some of the most powerful lasers ever built, supplied by German industrial firm Trumpf.

The resulting light is then guided through a series of ultra-smooth mirrors made by German optics specialist Zeiss. The mirrors, which operate in a vacuum and have surfaces smoother than those used in space telescopes, direct the light into the core of the machine.

Inside, the platform holding the silicon wafers levitates on magnetic fields and accelerates and decelerates at speeds of up to 70–80 metres per second, allowing for extraordinary precision during chip production.

How are ASML’s systems delivered?

EUV machines are assembled in the Netherlands before being disassembled and packed into around 40 shipping containers. They are then flown aboard Boeing 747 cargo planes to semiconductor fabrication plants around the world.

Customers include TSMC in Taiwan, Samsung and SK Hynix in South Korea, Intel and Micron in the United States, and Rapidus in Japan.

ASML shipped 44 EUV systems last year, and analysts expect demand — and deliveries — to rise sharply in 2026 and 2027 as AI-driven chip production continues to accelerate.