The Unlikely Success Story of Tech-Giant ASML

France's Mistral AI has become Europe's most valuable artificial intelligence start-up, partly thanks to investment by Dutch firm ASML. Though not a household name, ASML is a key player in global technology. It may also have a role to play in fostering “European digital sovereignty”  limiting European dependence on US tech giants. 

Founded just two years ago, Mistral AI, France's leading artificial intelligence company, reached a valuation of a whopping 11.7 billion euros after raising 1.7 billion euros from investors on Monday, September 8. 

Though still relatively modest in size compared with US rivals ChatGPT and Perplexity, Mistral AI has become the most valuable French tech start-up and the most valuable AI company in Europe. 

While the success of the company’s chatbot, Le Chat, has attracted much media hype in France, Mistral AI’s rise owes a lot to a non-French company, the Dutch firm ASML – a world leader in manufacturing the machines used to make computer chips.  

An unlikely success story 

ASML’s 1.3 billion euro investment in Mistral AI means it is now the French company's second-largest shareholder, after its founders. 

Headed by Frenchman Christophe Fouquet – another reason for French pride – ASML is a tech giant little known to the general public. Headquartered in the Dutch town of Veldhoven near Eindhoven, ASML has become a key player in the tech industry over the past 20 years – as big a part of the technology sector as Nvidia, Apple, Samsung or Microsoft. 

Founded in 1984 as a small side research project of Dutch electronics giant Philips, ASML initially struggled to find customers and narrowly escaped bankruptcy.  

The company set out to revolutionize the way microprocessors are designed by developing high-precision tools for etching integrated circuits onto computer chips.  

By the end of the 1980s, its parent company Philips was not in the best of financial shape. But thanks to a providential personal investment of $16 million by Henk Bodt, one of Philips's directors, ASML was able to survive while developing the technology that would make its fortune.

The cash infusion enabled ASML to develop the groundbreaking PAS 5500 lithography platform in the early 1990s, a technology still used today to operate an ultra-sophisticated printing process for semiconductor electronic circuits.

A machine the size of a bus to make tiny things 

ASML’s pivotal role in the manufacture of computer chips stems from its pre-eminence in making extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, which enable the production of more powerful and ever-smaller microchips.

Ironically, this art of miniaturisation is only possible thanks to machines the size of a bus. These gigantic EUV machines have been at the heart of the company's success since it sold its first one in 2010 and have enabled ASML to carve out a crucial place in the high-tech revolution.

Its cutting-edge technology had no competitors, and giants like Samsung, Intel, and Taiwan's TSMC (the world's leading semiconductor manufacturer) have grown dependent on EUV.

Chips created using these miniaturisation processes underpinned innovation in smartphones and they are also found in the electronics of aircraft and cars.

ASML can “print” computer chip circuits in its laboratories on demand – or sell its machines at a cost of $300 million per unit.  

Since 2010, it has sold just over 140 machines. To be safely shipped, an ASML machine has to be dismantled and then transported by a fleet of twenty trucks and three planes the size of Boeing 747s, according to CNBC, one of the few media outlets that have been allowed to visit ASML's laboratories. 

Today, ASML is worth more than $250 billion on the stock market, more than French luxury giant LVMH. It could afford to invest 1.3 billion euros in Mistral AI without batting an eyelid. 

- By: Sébastian SEIBT, France24

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