ASML: A Glimmering Monolith

The company, a Dutch confectioner of lithography machines – those intricate devices that etch the future onto silicon – finds itself in a position of enviable, almost suffocating, dominance. It is, quite simply, the sole purveyor of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology, a process as vital to modern chip fabrication as a well-mixed martini is to a civilized evening. The relentless hunger for processing power – fuelled by the insatiable maw of artificial intelligence – has, predictably, benefited ASML. The demand, one might say, is less a rising tide than a frothing, iridescent wave.







