alt Hacker NewsASML says it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026
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Just for context, because I was curious: the when they say no orders, that's following 2 known orders in 2024 and 3 in 2025.
Happy to hear India got mentioned by the same executive during that conversation. We are just started buying from them. I went to Semicon India 2026, held in delhi last week. The energy was amazing. Really pleasant. all big names including ASML.
I'm european and I would buy an ASML t-shirt, will this move the needle enough?
Semiconductor fabs involve a lot of hazardous chemicals, process changes and high energy consumption. Exactly the kind of thing European regulations tend to deter or slow down. Which is somewhat fine if there is nowhere else to build it, but if other places are easier, well...
The Dutch govt is slowly nationalising the chip industry, by making taxes so high no company can survive international competition, and then using this tax money to buy stock in all deep tech companies calling it investing.
So currently europe is exposed to russia-ukraine, us-iran, and shortly china-taiwan. This is not a great place to be in.
It seems to be "dump on Europe" day which I'm sure is popular but lets just stop for a second and ask what the sales of ASML machinery to the US would be without the CHIPS act .... a massive subsidy. Aren't subsidies supposed to be a bad European thing??? I'm confused. Are we free market proponents or planned economy proponents?
With all the regulations nobody in their right mind would build a fab in Europe.
Europe is increasingly relying on the rest of the world to supply it with critical things. It’s FAFOed with regulations that have driven these things elsewhere and now is heading into a “FO” world of hurt as the tables are turned and they desperately need things and have to pay the price. This will likely define the next 20 years in Europe.
Untrue. TSMC is just building a state of the art chip factory in Dresden, and they are certainly using ASML.
> We’re not selling anything at all in Europe. That’s because Europe isn’t investing and because no chip factories are being built there
Will Europe accept being a manufacturer only? Or will they finally pick up with a late comer advantage? We need to wait and see.
The automotive industry or, should I say, Volkswagen isn't interested in state-of-the-art chips, so the fabs won't be built - simple.
Europe will keep making manufacturing equipment, but leave the actual production to those who have the grid capacity and capital.
> Another concern is that even advanced silicon produced in Ireland or at ESMC is then shipped to other regions for packaging, meaning that European companies have largely lost their ability to produce sophisticated chips entirely in Europe. In turn, this means that, for now, there is hardly any strategic point for European authorities to create demand for chips that are 'Made in Europe' because they are either not assembled in Europe, not produced in Europe, or not developed in Europe. We have no idea whether this is eventually going to change, but there are currently no signs that it will.
This is just such a dire situation to be in. Even USA has seen the writing on the wall regarding China-Taiwan which is why it has been strategically re-homing all the most advanced chip fab technology to Arizona [1].
But luckily Germany saved the world by shutting down their power plants for good
China's CAS institute charts DUV route to 3nm GAA without EUV - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757999 - September 2026
export of the best machines should be banned before europe builds its own chip manufacturing and supply chain
> So far, however, the law has done little to spur the construction of new semiconductor factories in Europe. The European Court of Auditors concluded last year that the EU is unlikely to achieve its goal of doubling Europe’s share of the global chip market by 2030.
They should make another law and probably a few more commissions of auditors.
Misleading article, they are selling to corporations already who in turn have plans to create a few fabs in Europe. So it is maybe more about European companies who are not buying, but that rests on difficult capital availability and fragmented nature of the continent. Europe is not one country after all, someone wants a fab in Germany, but the why is it not in France or Sweeden.
Europe is continually complaining about its dependency on Chinese steel, cars, electronics and semiconductors yet their carmakers are buying cheap Chinese steel instead of European steel and European semiconductor manufacturers are preferring cheap Chinese semiconductor equipment over ASML gear.
The European Commission wanted to put hefty tariffs on dumped Chinese steel but the carmakers sought an exemption. They don't care about European sovereignty, only about their profits. Penny wise and pound foolish. I doubt there will still be a European car industry in two decades or so.
Europe is a lost continent.
China is where the demand is. Sell to China and stop being an ass and US's puppet.
when China finally cracks EUV we might be able to afford PC parts again?
oddly cheering for this but I doubt it will end well
* https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-built-its-manh...
The Netherlands has always put its economic chips on America and Asia.
Europe is just a geographic accident as far as the Dutch are concerned.
What is perhaps more important from ASML's standpoint is that none of the ongoing fab projects in Europe are leading-edge fabs set to use EUV and eventually High-NA EUV lithography scanners. The tools that European fabs use today and that new facilities are set to use in the future are mature tools that cost considerably less than advanced EUV or immersion DUV scanners. This is perhaps a concern for ASML, as the company is naturally interested in selling its more sophisticated and expensive equipment.
Missing from article is where they are selling which I assume is mostly Taiwan and America.
It’s ok we will get cheap chips from Taiwan without having to invest a single dime once the bubble bursts.
We will keep working on philosophy, theory and arts. Let the rest of the world get their hands dirty building things.
The European Commission strikes again!
Amusement Park continent. And yes, I'm European and know what I'm talking about.
I can't imagine it is cheap to get EUV machines these days. Maybe they don't want to get into a bidding war with America and Taiwan and are waiting for things to cool down?
"During a gold rush, sell shovels."
I'm fed up with the regular euro bashing. People are underestimating what EU countries can do. The whole history was similar. France, for example, was neither the first to build high-end luxury products nor was it the first to embrace the Industrial Revolution. It managed to catch up in any case.
EU countries went from killing each other in two of the most deadly wars to having a union in 30 years.
I wish that the EU did the same as China did years ago, and that is to block any non-EU tech company from entering the market. We could have had the Google/Meta equivalent years ago.
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I hope my company (if I have one) can also blame a continent for not buying my product instead of trying to sell better :D
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The EU needs to stop acting as if all is fine. The EU commission is totally useless, from A to Z. There is zero strategy in play here. They need to take a much more pro-active stance - fining US companies that work against europeans is fine, but you also need to have viable alternatives. And that simply is not happening right now.
What do Europeans think of the European economy? From my American perspective it looks like they are trying to lose, trying to fall backwards, trying to become a less prosperous society. No one seems to be building anything, and the governments seem to be preventing anyone who tries to advance from doing so. What am I missing?