Europe's biggest tech giant slides 5% on reports of a Chinese rival encroaching on its turf

Jul 28, 2026 08:10 PM - 1 day ago 107

ASML CEO

ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet pinch a Lego exemplary of the company's EUV machine. Bloomberg/Getty Images

Europe's astir valuable institution faces a caller threat aft China reportedly took a measurement toward matching its unsocial tech that's important to the world spot market.

Shares successful ASML, the only institution connected the planet tin of wide producing the utmost ultraviolet lithography machines utilized to build cutting-edge chips, slid astir 5% successful premarket trading connected Tuesday aft reports that a Chinese rival had made a breakthrough.

The Information and Reuters reported connected Monday and Tuesday that a Chinese state-backed institution had begun manufacturing immersion deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines.

That represents a notable threat to ASML, which dominates the marketplace for DUV machines and has seen a surge successful orders successful caller months arsenic the AI roar has supercharged demand.

Shares of ASML closed astir 6% down connected Monday. The DUV machines being built by China are astatine an early shape and do not yet lucifer ASML's technology, Reuters and The Information some reported, citing sources acquainted pinch the matter.

China reportedly plans to manufacture 5 DUV machines this twelvemonth and astir 20 adjacent year, good down the 130 comparable machines ASML expects to vessel this year.

However, the improvement is the latest twist successful China's yearslong effort to match ASML's technology and drawback up pinch the West's expertise to build precocious chips, which is simply a captious bottleneck successful the title to train and deploy frontier AI models.

ASML did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

The Dutch tech elephantine has been targeted by Chinese espionage successful the past, and ASML has been barred by US and Dutch regulations from shipping its astir precocious utmost ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines — which usage ultraviolet ray to task microscopic patterns onto wafers — to China.

It comes aft ASML announced plans to summation its manufacturing capacity for bus-sized EUV machines to meet surging demand.

The company's CFO told reporters this period that the expanded capacity plans see proviso for Elon Musk's Terafab semiconductor moonshot, successful which Tesla and SpaceX will subordinate forces to build a monolithic $55 cardinal fabrication plant.

ASML's machines are basal if Terafab is to succeed. Business Insider antecedently reported that Musk took clip retired of SpaceX's IPO week to beam into an soul ASML gathering past period to pitch employees connected the project.

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