U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has told senior executives at Dutch chipmaker ASML that he believes one of the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines may have reached China, a potential breach of export controls that have barred such sales since the first Trump administration. Senior administration officials told Bloomberg they hold evidence of EUV-related components and transport equipment being shipped to China, though that evidence has not been shared publicly or with ASML itself. The company has categorically denied that any EUV machine has ever existed on Chinese soil.
The dispute carries enormous consequences for the global AI buildout. ASML holds a complete monopoly on EUV lithography, the only technology capable of printing the microscopic circuit patterns used in the most advanced AI chips. Every cutting-edge processor produced by TSMC, the foundry behind Nvidia’s and Apple’s chips, depends on ASML machines that took roughly two decades to develop. The company is Europe’s most valuable public company, with a market capitalisation approaching $700 billion.
CEO Christophe Fouquet said ASML tracks every machine ever shipped and maintains an internal firewall preventing China-based staff from accessing EUV technology or documentation. He argued the complexity of EUV — where solving a single core technical problem took 20 years alone — made reverse-engineering without physical access effectively impossible.
The allegations emerged alongside separate developments that raise questions about commercial motivations. The Commerce Department under Lutnick committed up to $150 million to xLight, a startup developing next-generation light-source technology positioned as a potential enhancement to ASML’s EUV systems. Separately, Peter Thiel has backed Substrate, a startup pursuing more direct competition with ASML. A bipartisan congressional bill that would ban all ASML deep ultraviolet shipments to China, representing roughly 20% of the company’s 2026 revenue, is also advancing through committee.
