Explainer: The $250 million ASML ‘printer’ behind Nvidia’s chips

vm_admin
Explainer: The 0 million ASML ‘printer’ behind Nvidia’s chips

By Toby Sterling,Nathan Vifflin
Publication Date: 2026-01-28 05:02:00

AMSTERDAM, Jan 28 (Reuters) – ASML (ASML.AS), opens new tab has become Europe’s most valuable company thanks to its dominance in making lithography systems, huge “chip printing” machines that cost $250 million each and are indispensable to firms driving the AI boom.
Here is a closer look at the technology behind the Dutch company’s rise.

Sign up here.

WHAT IS DRIVING DEMAND FOR ASML’S PRINTERS

ASML holds a monopoly on the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines applied in the manufacturing of the most advanced semiconductors, though rivals in China and the U.S. are trying to develop alternatives.

Rapid advances in AI and a global build-out of data centres has boosted demand for such chips, making supplying Nvidia’s (NVDA.O), opens new tab manufacturer TSMC (2330.TW), opens new tab and other makers of AI chips ASML’s number one business.

THE TECHNOLOGY: HUGE MACHINES WORKING AT NANOSCALE

The machines, the size of a school bus and weighing 150 tons, use a complex system of lasers, mirrors and magnets to write microscopic circuitry onto silicon wafers needed in chip production.

They map out layers of circuitry by shining patterns of light onto silicon wafers, each containing maybe a hundred AI chips, with unparalleled precision.

The EUV wavelength is 13 nanometers. By comparison a human hair is between 80,000 and 100,000 nanometers thick.

The machines offered “patterning precision, scalability and energy efficiency” that advanced chip manufacturing and AI chips in particular depended on,…

Related Posts