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ASML serves as the linchpin of modern chipmaking.
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AI is a multi-decade growth catalyst for its business.
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The company’s moat is practically unbreakable.
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10 stocks we like better than ASML ›
In every major technological shift, there’s a company quietly powering it from behind the scenes. For the artificial intelligence boom, that company is ASML Holding (NASDAQ: ASML).
The Dutch firm doesn’t make chips like Nvidia or Intel — it builds the machines that make those chips possible. Its technology sits at the heart of modern computing, and as AI accelerates demand for cutting-edge semiconductors, ASML’s role is becoming even more critical.
Here’s why investors are paying attention to ASML now.
ASML builds lithography systems — machines that chipmakers use to “print” billions of tiny circuits onto silicon wafers. Those circuits form the brains of our digital world: powering smartphones, data centers, cars, and virtually every AI model running today.
If semiconductor manufacturing were a printing process, ASML’s systems would be the ultra-precise printers that bring chip designs to life. Using beams of ultraviolet light, these machines etch patterns thinner than a strand of hair. That precision defines how powerful, efficient, and advanced a chip can be.
Its crown jewel is Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography — a technology so complex that ASML is the only company on the planet capable of building it. Each EUV system costs more than $200 million, weighs over 180 tons, and contains more than 100,000 parts.
EUV machines are indispensable for producing the most advanced chips that drive iPhones, GPUs, and high-performance AI servers. Without ASML, those chips couldn’t be made.
That explains why ASML counts Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Intel, and Samsung Electronics as its biggest customers. It’s the one supplier the entire semiconductor industry depends on.
Artificial intelligence is creating a once-in-a-generation upgrade cycle across the chip industry. Every new AI model demands more computing power, and that power comes from denser, faster, more energy-efficient chips.
To make those chips, manufacturers need ASML’s machines. That link is direct and consequential: as AI spending grows, so does demand for ASML’s equipment. Each new fab, node, and GPU generation pushes more orders toward ASML since these advanced chips can only be produced using ASML’s EUV technology.
What excites long-term investors is that this isn’t a short-term cycle. It’s a structural shift. AI workloads are becoming a core layer of the global economy — embedded in cloud computing, automotive systems, healthcare, and beyond.
