ASML and the US probe: alleged EUV machine shipment to China

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has told senior ASML executives he’s concerned that one of ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines may have ended up in China, and ASML says no such machine exists there. Senior administration officials told Bloomberg they have evidence of EUV-related components and transport equipment shipments to China but have repeatedly declined to show it to Bloomberg or to ASML itself.

What is the US alleging?

Lutnick has raised a specific concern that an EUV system, the only class of machines capable of printing the most advanced semiconductor patterns, may have reached Chinese soil. Bloomberg reported senior administration officials claimed evidence exists that ASML shipped EUV-related components and transport equipment to China, though the Commerce Department did not answer Bloomberg’s questions about whether it has proof an actual EUV system is on Chinese soil.

The allegation sits beside two concrete policy realities in the sources: ASML has been barred from selling EUV to China since the first Trump administration, and the U.S. has built an export-control regime aimed at stopping advanced AI-capable semiconductors from bolstering Beijing’s military and industrial base.

How does ASML respond and what is the context?

ASML says no EUV machine exists or ever existed in China; CEO Christophe Fouquet told the author that "ASML tracks every machine it has ever shipped," adding they are either in active use with monitored customers or have been dismantled and returned. Fouquet said ASML walled off employees who can access EUV technology from those who cannot, and that China-based staff sit on the wrong side of that wall by design.

ASML’s position rests on technical and commercial arguments given in the source. The company stresses that EUV required roughly two decades to solve the single genuinely new problem of generating EUV light, and that 80% of the machine’s components relied on decades of prior knowledge. Commercially, ASML still sells older deep ultraviolet (DUV) tools to China within permitted rules, and the company expects roughly 20% of its 2026 revenue to come from already-permitted sales to China. The source frames that DUV business as a deliberate way to preserve a generational gap without enabling a future competitor.

The broader context in the source includes U.S. domestic moves touching ASML’s monopoly. The Commerce Department under Lutnick agreed late last year to put up to $150 million of public money into xLight, a startup working on next-generation light-source technology; xLight’s CEO said the company sees itself as a future partner to ASML rather than a rival. Separately, Peter Thiel has backed Substrate, a startup pursuing its own EUV-rival technology. A bipartisan bill moving through Congress would go further than EUV restrictions and effectively ban all ASML DUV shipments to China; that bill cleared a key committee in April and the Trump administration has not taken a formal position on it.

Why it matters

If even one EUV machine made it into Chinese hands, the source says it would represent one of the most consequential breaches of the export-control regime the U.S. has built to limit advanced AI capability reaching Beijing’s military and industrial base. ASML is the sole supplier of EUV tools, and the company’s market capitalization has been trading in the neighborhood of $700 billion as of this week, making any confirmed breach strategically and economically significant.

The scrutiny also has a political dimension: the Commerce Department’s funding of xLight, the existence of startups backed by high-profile investors like Peter Thiel, and a congressional push to curtail DUV shipments create overlapping incentives and pressures around who controls next-generation lithography.

What to watch

The clearest near-term signals will be whether the Commerce Department or Congress makes the evidence public and whether the bipartisan bill that would ban all ASML DUV shipments to China advances beyond the committee that cleared it in April. Any public release of evidence that an EUV system is in China, or a formal U.S. position on the DUV ban, would be decisive developments.