Wednesday saw the stock price of ASML, the world’s largest lithography machine manufacturer, plunge by 11% in Amsterdam. The company’s Chief Financial Officer warned that the uncertainty surrounding tariff negotiations has prompted US chipmakers to delay their final investments.
On Wednesday, July 16, the share price of lithography machine manufacturers dropped by 11% on the Amsterdam stock market to 630.70 euros, marking the largest intraday decline since January 27 of this year. Over the past year, the company’s market value has shrunk by approximately 140 billion euros (155 billion US dollars).
ASML’s CEO, Christophe Fouquet, retracted the sales growth forecast for 2026 and attributed it to trade disputes and global tensions.
Fouquet stated in a release, “We continue to see increasing uncertainties brought by macroeconomic and geopolitical developments. Therefore, while we are still preparing for growth in 2026, it cannot be confirmed at present.”
Chief Financial Officer Roger Dassen indicated that the US might impose a 30% tariff on European goods, potentially raising the price of a single high-end machine from 250 million euros to 325 million euros.
ASML announced that its order intake for the second quarter of this year reached 5.5 billion euros, exceeding expectations.
ASML’s next-generation lithography machine is the High-Numerical Aperture (High-NA) EUV lithography machine, which enhances resolution by increasing the numerical aperture (NA), enabling smaller feature sizes and higher transistor density. ASML is currently the only company capable of producing EUV lithography machines, and the High-NA EUV lithography machine is its latest offering to meet the demand for process nodes below 3nm.
According to Nikkei Asia reported on Wednesday, the unit price of the High-NA EUV lithography machine is 350 million US dollars, making it the most expensive chipmaking tool to date. Industry insiders describe it as the most complex machine yet.
The lithography machine weighs 150,000 kilograms and measures 14 meters long, 4 meters high, and 4 meters wide, composed of millions of components. In the light source container, a powerful laser strikes 50,000 tin droplets per second, generating EUV light.
In the wafer handling system, a precision mechanical arm moves wafers in and out of the system’s vacuum environment, operating with high positioning accuracy and constant temperature. The wafer stage positions the wafer at a precision of less than one nanometer (approximately 4 silicon atoms) per exposure, checking and adjusting 20,000 times per second.
ASML’s Executive Vice President of Technology, Jos Benschop, stated that the High-NA EUV lithography machine had to be completely redesigned due to its light source wavelength of only 13.5 nanometers compared to the 193-nanometer wavelength used in early DUV systems. Typically, the shorter the wavelength, the finer the chip design circuit patterns that can be printed.
Developing the next-generation High-NA EUV technology is equally complex. For example, redesigning just the projection optical system and illumination system took over eight years. The illumination system is a core component of the machine, responsible for shaping and focusing light beams to project chip designs onto wafers.
Supplier Carl Zeiss revealed that the optical system of the High-NA EUV lithography machine comprises approximately 65,000 parts, with a production cycle of one year. The company disclosed to Nikkei Asia that the development of this system required over 10 million hours and has been in collaboration with ASML for 25 years.
The complexity of these machines is one of ASML’s biggest competitive advantages. ASML’s exclusive position in cutting-edge chip manufacturing, particularly in EUV lithography machines, even surpasses that of the world’s top chipmaker, TSMC.