The state-owned company at the centre of China’s newest chipmaking push finally has a name. Reuters reported on Tuesday that Shanghai Aishengna Electronic Technology Group, a little-known state-owned group, is leading the effort to mass-produce domestically developed immersion deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The company is said to have built its programme by absorbing teams from several of China’s top lithography startups.
The Information first reported on Monday that an unidentified state-backed Shanghai firm had begun manufacturing the machines, and the news alone was enough to send ASML shares down more than 8% at one point on Monday.
Reuters is the first to attach a name to the company, which matters because immersion DUV is a corner of the market ASML has dominated for years, and because Beijing’s push to build it at home is a direct response to the export controls that have kept the Dutch firm’s best tools out of China.
Aishengna itself is obscure, and Reuters’s description of it hoovering up staff from established ventures fits a familiar pattern in China’s chip drive, where the state stitches scattered efforts into a single national champion.
