By Kim Mackrael
VELDHOVEN, the Netherlands -- Big tech companies are gearing up to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on artificial-intelligence infrastructure. Their plans depend on a one-of-a-kind Dutch equipment maker that most Americans have never heard of.
ASML is the world's only supplier of the complex machines that are needed to make cutting-edge chips at scale. Those chips help OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini produce the instant, humanlike responses that have made them so popular.
Now ASML is racing to meet an industrywide surge in demand. It is building new facilities, repurposing existing clean rooms and working on more advanced machines capable of churning out more chips. It is also adding more engineers, while cutting leadership roles in a push to speed up decision-making.
"We do not want to be the bottleneck for our customers," ASML Chief Executive Christophe Fouquet said this month after the company lifted its revenue guidance for the year. "We have been using all the tools we have at hand to make sure we don't get there."
Four U.S. tech giants -- Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon.com and Alphabet's Google -- are planning more than $600 billion in capital spending this year alone as they build out AI infrastructure. That in turn has spurred chip makers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., to accelerate investments, fueling more demand for ASML's machines.
The boom has helped cement ASML's position as Europe's most valuable company. It has soared above Europe's luxury industry stalwarts like LVMH and Hermès in market value, making ASML a rare tech darling in the region.
"All their customers are saying, 'Please give me as many machines as you can. And by the way we need more next year, and we need way more in 2028,'" said David Dai, senior analyst at Bernstein.
ASML insists it can meet customer demand. The company said this month that it plans to make at least 60 of its standard extreme ultraviolet machines this year, 36% more than it sold in 2025. Next year, ASML should be able to crank out at least 80 of those machines, executives said.
Demand for ASML's next-generation EUV tools is less clear. A TSMC executive said recently that it is sticking with standard EUV for as long as it can because the higher-end EUV models are too expensive. Some analysts say the machines cost roughly $400 million or more.
To help ramp up, ASML expects to spend about $2.2 billion this year on property, infrastructure and equipment, up roughly 20% from 2025. Hiring and training costs will rise to accommodate faster production, a senior executive said this month.
But boosting production isn't easy. ASML's high-end lithography machines are roughly the size of a school bus and are among the most complex devices humans have ever created. Inside, a high-powered laser fires bursts of light to flatten and vaporize tiny drops of molten tin. The process creates an explosion of extreme ultraviolet light, which the machine uses to print microscopic patterns onto silicon discs.
The machines take months to assemble and are built using components from hundreds of different suppliers. Technicians wearing bunny suits put the machines together in clean rooms pumped with purified air to prevent contamination. A single particle of dust can upend the entire production process.
"It's just the nature of building a really expensive, complex tool with a complex supply chain," said Jeff Koch, an analyst with SemiAnalysis and a former ASML employee. "You cannot quickly or easily scale."
The company isn't the only potential bottleneck in the AI race. Its customers need to build enough clean rooms to house the machines they want to buy, a massive undertaking that requires construction expertise, power hookups and abundant energy supplies.
ASML took lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, when an unexpected jump in demand left it with a backlog of orders.
During that time, the company drew up plans to sharply increase capacity and pressed ahead with time-consuming tasks such as securing building permits and constructing new clean rooms. While the rooms weren't immediately needed, executives said that building them in advance means ASML is better prepared to increase production now.
It set up new clean rooms in the U.S., Germany and South Korea in recent years. Construction of a new campus near its Dutch headquarters is expected to start this year.
The pandemic also pushed ASML to work more closely with its supply chain. The company created a new position on its executive board in 2023 to focus on suppliers.
It regularly meets suppliers to make sure everyone is ready to expand at the same pace. No supplier wants to be singled out for not doing enough to prepare, Chief Financial Officer Roger Dassen told The Wall Street Journal earlier this year, calling the meetings "healthy peer pressure."
ASML's pivot to faster growth has been quick. After warning investors last summer that it might not grow in 2026, the company raised its sales outlook in recent months as the industry's AI infrastructure plans ballooned. Earlier this month, it said that annual sales should be in the range of about $42 billion to $47 billion, up from a little over $38 billion last year.
Meanwhile, technological advances are starting to allow customers to get more chips out of a single machine. ASML said certain new high-end machines are now able to make 10 more wafers an hour than they could in the past. It is also offering to upgrade older machines it has already sold to boost their productivity.
Longer term, ASML is working to industrialize a stronger light source that could make its machines significantly more productive. However, that process will likely take years.
"Our customers are very happy to be able to get more wafers out on any tool," Fouquet said in a video posted to ASML's website earlier this month.
One challenge for ASML is that much of the talent pool in the southern Netherlands has already been snapped up by the company and its suppliers.
To avoid poaching from its own supply chain, ASML is working with universities to find candidates from across the Netherlands and abroad.
If customer demand rises by more than ASML expects, "we'll figure out a way to get there," Dassen said in an interview. "Just like they can put concrete on the ground, we can put concrete on the ground."
Write to Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 25, 2026 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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