ASML

Red Queen Podcast

Why are we doing an episode about ASML, a business that the BBC referred to in 2020 as "a relatively obscure Dutch company,"?

It started with host, Eeke's, curiosity about an iconic company from her homeland of the Netherlands. But the deeper we descended into the ASML world of semiconductors, chips, and lithography, the more we all realized that we had something pretty special on our hands.

ASML owns 100 percent of the extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) market. These are the machines that the biggest chip producers like TSMC, Intel, and Samsung rely on to power the world's most innovative chips.

Their monopoly was a hard won. When they started investing in EUV in the 1980s, neither ASML nor anyone else in the industry knew whether this technology was possible. It was truly science fiction. Then over the span of 40 years, ASML was a part of the most mind breaking technological advancements, beating out competitors in the United States and Japan to ultimately dominate the lithography market. And, enable us to keep up with Moore's Law (which perhaps would be more aptly called 'Moore's Challenge.')

ASML is Europe's second largest company, all run from a field in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, and in this process, they have built one of the biggest technical moats in the industry.

Our research for this episode relied heavily on the following 3 books: ASML's architects by René Raaijmakers, Chip War by Chris Miller, and Focus: The ASML way by Marc Hijink.