ASML Holding N.V.

Who owns ASML?
ASML Holding N.V. is a widely held public company on Euronext Amsterdam and NASDAQ. Institutional investors own most shares; no single shareholder controls it.

Is ASML a monopoly?
Effectively, yes, in extreme ultraviolet lithography: it is the only supplier of EUV machines. In older DUV lithography it holds roughly 90 percent share, with Nikon and Canon in the remainder.

What was ASML's 2025 revenue?
Total net sales of EUR 32.7 billion, with EUR 9.6 billion net income, a 52.8 percent gross margin, and a EUR 38.8 billion backlog.

Where is ASML headquartered?
Veldhoven, Netherlands, in the Brainport Eindhoven region where it was founded in 1984.

Who is ASML's CEO?
Christophe Fouquet has been President and CEO since April 2024, succeeding Peter Wennink after his decade-long tenure.

Can ASML sell to China?
It may sell older DUV systems and service most installed machines, but Dutch export controls, applied under US pressure since 2019, block EUV systems and the most advanced DUV machines from China.

Philips research labs developed wafer stepper prototypes in the 1970s, but the products languished inside the conglomerate. In 1983 and 1984 Philips partnered with ASM International, Arthur del Prado's chip equipment firm, launching ASM Lithography in April 1984 from a leaky shed on the Philips campus in Eindhoven.

The early years nearly killed the company. ASM International sold its stake in 1988 under financial pressure, leaving Philips as owner. ASML survived on the PAS 2500 and then the modular PAS 5500 stepper, which began winning orders in the early 1990s against Nikon and Canon.

The 1995 dual listing in Amsterdam and on NASDAQ gave ASML independence; Philips sold its final shares by 2004. Two technology bets then built the moat. Immersion lithography, which places ultra-pure water between lens and wafer, arrived in 2004 and stole share from the Japanese incumbents. EUV followed: ASML committed to a technology that required inventing a laser-produced tin plasma light source, polishing mirrors to atomic precision, and coaxing customers Intel, Samsung, and TSMC to co-fund development by taking equity stakes in 2012.

Production EUV systems shipped from 2016, and by 2020 they had become mandatory equipment for leading-edge logic and memory. High-NA EUV, with 0.55 numerical aperture optics for the next node generation, shipped its first systems to Intel starting in late 2023. US-Dutch export controls blocked EUV sales to China from 2019 and later restricted advanced immersion DUV, a geopolitical ceiling that has cost the company its largest single-country market by volume.

Fiscal 2025 marked another record: EUR 32.7 billion in sales, EUR 9.6 billion net income, EUR 38.8 billion backlog, a new EUR 12 billion buyback announced for execution through 2028, and a reorganization streamlining Technology and IT functions to focus engineering on innovation.

ASML achieved its 2025 target of net scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas neutrality, cutting operational emissions 60 percent since 2019 and offsetting the residual 26 kilotonnes. Its larger footprint is scope 3 at 11.5 million tonnes, mostly customer machine energy use; it pursues an SBTi-validated intensity target for 2025 and a 2040 value-chain neutrality goal.

Circular economy metrics are unusually strong: 90 percent of parts returned from the field and factory are reused. Socially, the company is a defining employer in the Brainport Eindhoven region, with 143 nationalities on staff and heavy investment in technical education partnerships.

ASML is a fixture on lists of Europe's most valuable and most innovative companies. It holds an AAA-style standing in sustainability indices for the semiconductor capital equipment sector, and its EUV program is regularly cited as one of the great engineering achievements of the twenty-first century, documented in the book Focus: The ASML Way by Marc Hijink.

ASML sits at the center of US-China technology conflict. Dutch export licenses for EUV to China were suspended from 2019, and 2023 to 2025 rules extended restrictions to advanced immersion DUV systems and servicing of some installed machines. China has sought domestic alternatives, and reports in 2025 alleged Chinese attempts to reverse-engineer ASML subsystems. The company also faced scrutiny over a 2022 incident involving a former employee and data theft, and its market dominance periodically draws antitrust commentary, though no formal action has resulted.