The chip world: who really calls the shots?

ASML, headquartered in Veldhoven (Netherlands), controls roughly 99% of the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine market used to make the most advanced chips. Only three companies in the world —TSMC, Samsung and Intel— can buy and use them.

The company nobody knows and everybody depends on is called **ASML**. It is headquartered in **Veldhoven**, a Dutch town that never makes the headlines, and it controls roughly **99%** of the extreme ultraviolet lithography machine market. In other words: almost every cutting-edge chip made in the world passes through its hands.

It doesn't make chips. It makes the machines that make them. And they are no ordinary machines: each one costs about **$350 million**, weighs as much as a building, and contains technology from **800 different suppliers**. Only **TSMC**, **Samsung** and **Intel** have the technical capability and the money to buy them and put them to work.

## What an EUV lithography machine actually does

Extreme ultraviolet lithography uses light of an extremely short wavelength to "draw" circuits just a few atoms in size onto the silicon wafer. It is the most critical step in advanced chip manufacturing. Without that machine, there is no 2-nanometer chip.

The problem is that nobody else knows how to build them. It's not a matter of patents or price: the engineering required to make an extreme ultraviolet beam work stably inside an industrial machine cannot be improvised. Years of research, billions invested, and a supply chain that borders on the implausible.

## The card Washington plays whenever it wants

ASML is European, but the light its machines use comes from the **United States**. That means **Washington** has the final say on who the technology can be sold to. It's no minor detail: China has no access to these machines and, at the current pace of development, won't for decades. Control of EUV lithography has become a foreign policy tool as effective as any tariff.

## Japan makes its move with stamps instead of light

Against that monopoly, Japan has developed a different technology: nanoimprint lithography (**NIL**). Instead of drawing with light, it stamps the pattern onto the wafer like a rubber stamp. **Canon** and **Dai Nippon Printing** are pushing this route, which has already achieved **10-nanometer** masks and promises chips equivalent to **1.4 nm** with **90% less energy**, without needing ASML's **$300 million** machines.

It sounds crude, but it works. NIL is already used for memory and specialty chips. Where it hasn't caught up yet is in the most advanced logic, the **2 nm** everyone is fighting over. There, Japan is still buying machines from ASML.

## The race isn't over

The question is whether NIL will ever manage to make advanced logic chips without losing precision. If it does, the Dutch monopoly's days are numbered. If not, ASML will remain the only kid on the block with the key to the workshop.

The race is on: the Netherlands versus Japan. Who can make smaller, cheaper chips without sacrificing precision. For now, the advantage is still Dutch.