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ASML does not manufacture chips. It manufactures the machines required to produce them. As artificial intelligence and semiconductor demand continue to grow, the company increasingly resembles something more than a technology supplier: a form of strategic infrastructure.
For decades, ASML was viewed primarily as a technology company. Today, it increasingly occupies a position that extends beyond markets and products. In this series, Altair Media explores how ASML became one of the world’s most strategically important enterprises—and what that may mean for the future of Europe and the global technology economy.
Europe’s technological future may depend less on national champions and more on networks of specialised ecosystems. From semiconductors and cloud infrastructure to energy systems and research clusters, competitiveness increasingly emerges from the connections between Europe’s most important capabilities.
Europe’s fragmented quantum landscape may appear inefficient, but it enables multiple technological paths to evolve in parallel. In an uncertain field, this diversity creates resilience—reducing systemic risk and allowing innovation to adapt as the technology matures.
As ASML expands, Brainport enters a new phase where technological scale begins to test the limits of social balance. What emerges is not just growth, but a deeper question about Europe’s ability to sustain its own success.
In the world of tomorrow, it’s not just corporations or nations that set the pace of technological and economic change — it’s universities. From Silicon Valley to Shenzhen, from Boston to Berlin, the places where knowledge is created and talent is shaped will determine which regions lead and which fall behind.
