ASML sells nothing in Europe, chips geopolitics accelerate
ASML disclosed it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026 because no chip factories are being built there. The comment thread immediately jumped to the strategic implication: is Europe resigning itself to being a consumer of chips rather than a producer? Germany's energy policy came up, as did China's reported progress on a DUV-based route to 3nm without EUV.
The pattern: semiconductor supply chain concentration is intensifying, not relaxing. ASML's European sales being zero is a concrete data point that the EU Chips Act has not yet moved real capital into fab construction. Meanwhile China is actively working around EUV export restrictions by pushing DUV harder.
This is a slow-moving but high-stakes story for anyone building hardware-dependent infrastructure. The assumption that advanced chips are a globally fungible commodity is wrong, and getting wronger.
So what?
Founders building in hardware, robotics, or any compute-intensive infrastructure should be paying attention to where fab capacity is and isn't being built. Supply chain risk for advanced chips is a real business continuity issue, not just a geopolitical talking point.