Who Owns ASML?

Philips developed early wafer stepper technology in its research labs in the 1970s but had not commercialized it successfully. In 1984 it formed a joint venture with ASM International, the Dutch chip equipment maker founded by Arthur del Prado, to bring lithography systems to market. ASML began life in a shed next to a Philips building in Eindhoven with a handful of engineers and a product the market barely noticed.

The 1980s were lean. ASM International, facing losses, sold its stake, and Philips briefly controlled the company before reducing its holding. ASML survived on the PAS 2500 and PAS 5500 steppers, machines that gradually won share against dominant Japanese competitors Nikon and Canon through the 1990s.

ASML listed on the Amsterdam and NASDAQ exchanges in 1995, and Philips exited entirely by 2004. Two decisions defined its rise. First, it pursued immersion lithography, placing water between lens and wafer to extend deep ultraviolet resolution, shipping systems in 2004 while rivals hesitated. Second, it spent more than two decades and billions of euros developing extreme ultraviolet lithography, a technology using 13.5 nanometer wavelength light generated by blasting tin droplets with lasers, pursued through a research consortium that dated to the 1990s.

EUV made ASML irreplaceable. The first production EUV systems shipped around 2016, and by the early 2020s every leading-edge chip from TSMC, Samsung, and Intel required them. High-NA EUV, a larger-optics successor generation priced around EUR 350 to 400 million per machine, began shipping to Intel in 2023 and 2024.

The company became a geopolitical fixture as well. From 2019, US pressure led the Dutch government to block EUV exports to China, and restrictions later extended to advanced immersion DUV systems, cutting ASML off from part of its largest market. Revenue still grew: 2025 delivered EUR 32.7 billion in net sales, EUR 9.6 billion net income, and a backlog of EUR 38.8 billion.