ASML has spent 2026 getting steadily, expensively larger. The Dutch company whose machines print the world’s most advanced chips is now Europe’s most valuable listed business, worth around $700bn (€600bn), and enough of the investors who own it now say the next round number out loud that the question has stopped sounding fanciful: could ASML be Europe’s first trillion-dollar company?
The case rests on the order book more than the share price. AI has pushed demand for lithography systems past what ASML can build, and the company is shaving weeks off the time it takes to assemble each machine, from about 22 weeks toward 15 or 16.
While planning to lift annual output of its extreme ultraviolet systems by around 30% next year and to raise production of its cheaper deep-ultraviolet machines by a similar margin. It has raised its 2026 sales forecast twice and is close to fully booked for 2027.
The maths is not exotic. Reaching a trillion means adding roughly $300bn, a gain of a little over 40% on a stock that has already climbed about 60% this year and, in June, became the most valuable European company on record.
ASML has added well over $250bn in market value this year alone, and Barclays, Susquehanna and Bernstein have all nudged price targets toward $2,600 a share since the results, even with the stock trading near 38 times next year’s expected earnings.
