Reading up on ASML

Since early 2025, international markets have outperformed the U.S. — emerging economies up 68%, Europe 45%, Japan 44% — driven by the global AI infrastructure supply chain and corporate reforms.

Control over semiconductor supply chains, from ASML's lithography to TSMC's manufacturing and NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem, determines which entities dominate the AI era.

ASML became the sole supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography machines through transatlantic cooperation, risky bets, and deep customer partnerships.

A hobbyist documents building a DRAM chip in a backyard shed, demonstrating that backyard semiconductor manufacturing is increasingly accessible.

ASML, the sole supplier of machines needed to make cutting-edge AI chips, is racing to expand capacity to meet surging demand from tech companies.

AI labs see explosive revenue from coding agents, but infrastructure bottlenecks in memory, energy, and chip manufacturing will constrain growth and raise prices.

Musk's TERAFAB plan bypasses ASML's EUV bottleneck by using Intel GaN chiplets on mature nodes and advanced 3D packaging to achieve 1 TWh compute capacity.

The article outlines potential downsides and limitations of AI development, including model stagnation, chip shortages, and cheap models, while also predicting advances like robot models and continual learning.