By Ben Cohen | Photography by Jussi Puikkonen for WSJ
The most important machines in the world are made by the most valuable company you've never heard of.
These extreme ultraviolet lithography tools are essential for printing the chips in phones, computers and data centers. There are only a few hundred in existence. And every single one is manufactured by the same Dutch company. But the technological marvel that underpins the entire global economy might not even be the most coveted product sold by ASML.
It also sells a product that has become even harder to buy than its EUV machines: the Lego versions of its EUV machines.
The collectibles are exclusively available to employees with verified ASML email addresses. They are limited to one set per person -- and the policy is now strictly enforced.
While both are scarce, there are some differences between the colossal machines that produce semiconductors and the children's toys that produce howls of pain when stepped on.
The real EUV instruments have more than 100,000 parts. The miniature versions have fewer than 1,000 pieces, including a purple lightning bolt for the extreme ultraviolet light -- and a Lego figurine dressed in a bunny suit.
The tools made of powerful lasers and absurdly precise mirrors sell for up to $400 million. The ones made of colorful plastic bricks cost about $200.
And it took decades of pioneering research and miraculous scientific breakthroughs to build the systems now in chip factories. It took one guy to rebuild them in Lego form.
The mastermind behind ASML's unlikeliest hit product is a data analyst named Rick Lenssen -- or, as he's now known to some colleagues, Brick Lenssen.
The process of turning the sophisticated machine into a pile of bricks began a few years ago, when Lenssen brought his young children to a Lego fair in the Netherlands. He was the one who left obsessed. When the 39-year-old father returned home, he began poking around a site called BrickLink to track down missing Lego pieces for his old sets. Before long, he was experimenting with software to design sets of his own.
For his first project, he decided to reconstruct ASML's offices, even if it meant spending nights and weekends thinking about the place where he works all day.
It took more than two years, EUR2,500 of his own money and roughly 25,000 bricks to come up with an exact replica, right down to the peregrine falcon that lives in a rooftop nest -- and a pigeon.
"His lunch," Lenssen said.
It took nearly another full year to find a place on campus to display it. After striking out with his colleagues in corporate real estate, Lenssen went straight to the top. He created a PowerPoint presentation and fired off a cold email on a Friday evening to Peter Wennink, then-CEO of ASML.
That night, Wennink replied: He loved the idea.
But when it was time to relocate his creation, Lenssen faced a very ASML problem. EUV machines are so massive that they have to be disassembled before they can be shipped to clients by three 747 planes. Lenssen also had to take his product apart, brick by brick -- because what he built in his attic wouldn't fit down his staircase. ASML movers loaded the cargo into a van and chauffeured a bunch of Legos over to campus.
To this day, the first thing visitors see when they arrive in ASML's reception area is Lenssen's creation.
And it wouldn't be the last time that he combined work and playing with Lego.
Around the time he completed his masterpiece, ASML was rolling out an internal app to guide employees around its Veldhoven, Netherlands campus. To help promote the app and reward beta-testers, the company enlisted Lenssen to design a Lego skyline of the campus.
Then he received his next assignment: turning the most consequential machine on the planet into a toy.
As it happens, there was already a plastic version of the EUV machine made by ASML engineer Jeroen Ottens, who once worked at Lego. But as it unveiled new models of its signature product, the company needed a fresh line of Lego contraptions -- and knew just who to ask.
Lenssen only needed weeks to design two models of the finely tuned machines, one of which came with an instructional manual that clocked in at 61 pages.
He wasn't paid, but there was one perk: He got the finished products for free.
Meanwhile, thousands of his colleagues were lining up to buy their corporate swag.
To Marco Pieters, ASML's chief technology officer, who brought the Lego sets home and assembled them at his kitchen table, they were a reminder that engineers live to solve tricky problems and build complex things -- no matter what they're made of. Others who work on the EUV machines used the Lego kits to explain to their families what they actually do.
Dutch engineers aren't known for being generous with praise, but they raved about Lenssen's work.
"Looks decent enough," reads one five-star review in the ASML shop.
With such glowing endorsements, it's no wonder that employees aren't the only ones trying to get their hands on these sets.
Brian Kirby, a Cornell University engineering professor, first saw a Lego version of the EUV machine when he attended ASML's technology conference. "As soon as I discovered that such a thing existed," he said, "I basically had to have it." At the time, anyone could visit the company's online store and buy one -- so he did.
"I should have bought two," he said.
Since then, ASML has tightened access to the employee store and canceled orders from outside the company.
But there are still Lego sets floating around online. In the Netherlands, they pop up on a marketplace called Marktplaats. On eBay, the EUV machines that fit in a box have sold for $600, and the company's full collection of Lego concoctions is listed for $4,500.
Most employees would never dream of parting with their precious Lego sets, though.
They have bought 1,355 of Lenssen's latest plastic lithography tool -- and the company has sold only six of the real thing.
Write to Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 20, 2026 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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