ASML's leaky first machine gave way to the world's chipmaking gatekeeper
ASML's debut product moved silicon wafers with oil pressure, and it leaked. Four decades later the Dutch firm is the only company building the extreme ultraviolet machines needed for the most advanced chips, and in January 2026 it was worth roughly 527 billion dollars, more than any other European tech business.
Philips spent the 1970s building prototype lithography machines, which project circuit patterns onto silicon, but by the early 1980s it needed to cut spending. In 1984 it spun the work off into a joint venture with ASM International. With no products, no market share and no name, the newcomer chose to outsource motors and optics and concentrate on assembling and tuning a modular machine. After the oil-driven PAS 2000 failed, an electric-motor successor that could expose 90 wafers an hour won a contract from AMD, and staff numbers rose from 17 to over 200 by 1986.
Philips nearly shut the venture down in early 1988 after ASM International pulled out; instead ASML went public that year. Its PAS 5500 of 1991 became the breakthrough. Nikon's machines were more precise, but ASML's modular design could be repaired quickly on site, which reportedly persuaded IBM to buy it. By 2002 ASML led the lithography market, and its dual-stage TWINSCAN systems, which cut idle time, helped it win two-thirds of global sales by the end of that decade.
Extreme ultraviolet took decades. Research began in 1997, and ASML joined a US consortium in 1999, agreeing to source 55 percent of parts for American sales from US suppliers. To fund the effort, it sold 23 percent of itself to Intel, TSMC and Samsung in 2012, with Intel paying 4.1 billion dollars for 15 percent, and it bought the light source maker Cymer. The machines were finished in the late 2010s.
Demand has since surged. Revenue climbed from 13 billion dollars in 2018 to 35 billion in 2024, and the Veldhoven-based company now employs more than 42,000 people.
Source: ASML
