en.Wedoany.com Reported - ASML's market capitalization reached $668 billion at the close of trading on June 3, surpassing the $650 billion record set by Novo Nordisk in June 2024, making it the most valuable company in European history. The Dutch company is the sole supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines used by TSMC, Samsung, and Intel to produce cutting-edge logic chips. Its stock rose after JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley released nearly identical research reports, which argued that the company could manufacture far more lithography equipment than the market had anticipated.
Both investment banks raised their target prices for ASML on the same day: JPMorgan from €1,515 to €1,900, and Morgan Stanley from €1,400 to €1,660, maintaining an overweight rating. JPMorgan analyst Sandeep Deshpande believes that ASML can deliver over 110 low-NA EUV systems without adding new factories, a figure significantly higher than the roughly 90-unit ceiling previously expected by investors, and also above the company's own short-term production plan. This capacity has major implications for the chip industry, as EUV equipment remains a severe bottleneck in the advanced chip supply chain. Every leading silicon wafer used to train and run AI models must pass through an ASML scanner at some stage, so more equipment shipments will directly translate into higher capacity at downstream fabs.
Morgan Stanley stated that its increased confidence in short-term shipments is based on comments made by ASML at its annual general meeting in April, where the company outlined expansion plans at the Brainport Industries Campus in Eindhoven, with construction set to begin in the third quarter of 2026. The investment bank warned that the campus "must be the starting point for a multi-phase expansion" to fully alleviate capacity concerns.
Notably, ASML's current market cap record still falls short of the thresholds already surpassed by its customers. Its current market value is far below the trillion-dollar mark that several U.S. chip companies have crossed, and its roughly 50% gain this year also lags behind the semiconductor sector, which has been boosted more significantly by AI demand. ASML had previously surpassed SAP to become Europe's largest listed company, and its current market cap exceeds the combined value of Europe's second- and third-largest companies by market cap, HSBC and Roche.
Despite ASML's monopoly in the lithography field, its long-term dominance is not without challenges. Multiple technology developments are currently targeting this area. Substrate, a San Francisco-based startup backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and the CIA-affiliated In-Q-Tel, has raised $100 million for its particle accelerator X-ray lithography system. The company claims the system can print 2nm-class features at a cost of approximately $10,000 per wafer, compared to an estimated $100,000 for simulated cutting-edge EUV. Canon is also shipping commercial nanoimprint tools, Nikon has launched lower-end products, and China claims to have found a path to bypass ASML equipment.
None of these technologies can replace EUV scanners in mass-produced logic chips in the short term. ASML's equipment prices range from approximately $235 million for low-NA systems to about $380 million for the high-NA EXE:5200B, the latter of which Intel purchased for its 14A node late last year. When asked about competitors by TechCrunch last month, ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet stated that there is a huge gap between the desire to have the technology and its actual realization, adding that "starting from scratch, the challenge is enormous."
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