ASML’s EUV Lithography Monopoly Drives Surging Global Chip Demand

ASML remains the sole EUV lithography supplier enabling the most advanced semiconductors, with 2025 bookings up sharply and chip demand pushing the market higher.

Rich by Coin

2026-03-22

ASML is the world’s only provider of EUV lithography machines. EUV lithographs are needed to make the most advanced semiconductor chips. ASML saw its new orders more than double quarter over quarter at the end of 2025. The prime example is ASML (NASDAQ: ASML).

It’s a Dutch company operating out of a relatively small and unassuming town in southern Netherlands called Veldhoven, but you and I rely on it (albeit indirectly) daily without thinking twice. ASML is, simply put, utterly foundational to the tech industry. EUV lithography machines are enormous technological marvels. Each one is about the size of a bus, costs upward of $400 million to purchase, and takes seven Boeing 747s or 25 trucks to move one to a customer.

See, modern semiconductor chips are incredibly small. The most advanced ones are no larger than 7 nanometers (nm), which is about 1/10,000th the width of a human hair. They do go smaller than that, though. To create them, ASML’s EUV lithography machines use an incredibly precise and powerful laser to etch the patterns the chips need to work onto them.