ASML, the only company on Earth capable of making the machines that make cutting-edge chips, just told investors it plans to ship roughly 65 Low-NA EUV lithography systems in 2026. That’s up from 44 units in 2025, a jump of nearly 50%.
CEO Christophe Fouquet dropped the number during the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call. For anyone tracking the AI supply chain, from Nvidia GPUs to the crypto mining rigs that depend on advanced silicon, this is the bottleneck update that actually matters.
Why a Dutch machine shop matters to crypto
Every advanced chip in the world, whether it powers an AI data center, a Bitcoin mining ASIC, or a next-gen consumer GPU, traces its lineage back to ASML’s lithography tools. These machines use extreme ultraviolet light to etch transistor patterns onto silicon wafers at near-atomic scale.
ASML is the sole supplier of EUV systems. There is no competitor. No alternative vendor. No Plan B.
