ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet on his company’s monopoly: no one is coming for us
ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet on his company’s monopoly: no one is coming for us
ASML 首席执行官 Christophe Fouquet 谈公司垄断地位：没人能取代我们
Every time you use AI, you are, in some small way, depending on a 42-year-old, 44,000-person Dutch company that spends €4.5 billion each year to advance its technology. ASML, headquartered in the Netherlands, makes the machines that make the chips that make AI possible. More specifically, it makes the only machines in the world capable of printing the microscopic patterns on silicon wafers that define the most advanced semiconductors — a process called extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV.
每当你使用人工智能时，在某种程度上，你都在依赖一家拥有 42 年历史、员工 4.4 万名的荷兰公司，该公司每年投入 45 亿欧元用于技术研发。总部位于荷兰的 ASML 制造着生产芯片的机器，而正是这些芯片让 AI 成为可能。更具体地说，它是世界上唯一能够制造出在硅片上刻印微观图案的机器的厂商，这些图案定义了最先进的半导体——这一过程被称为极紫外光刻（EUV）。
The machines are roughly the size of a school bus, take months to assemble, involve hundreds of suppliers, and cost anywhere from $200 million to upwards of $400 million apiece depending on the generation (prices that give even ASML’s biggest customers pause occasionally). That monopoly has made ASML the most valuable company in Europe, worth over $530 billion. And with the four largest American tech companies — Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google — committing more than $600 billion in AI infrastructure spending this year alone, demand for ASML’s machines has surged to the point where the company has openly said the world won’t have enough chips for years.
这些机器大约有一辆校车那么大，组装需要数月时间，涉及数百家供应商，根据代际不同，每台售价从 2 亿到 4 亿多美元不等（这样的价格有时连 ASML 最大的客户也会感到迟疑）。这种垄断地位使 ASML 成为欧洲市值最高的公司，价值超过 5300 亿美元。随着美国四大科技巨头——微软、Meta、亚马逊和谷歌——仅今年一年就在 AI 基础设施上投入超过 6000 亿美元，对 ASML 机器的需求激增，以至于该公司公开表示，未来几年全球芯片供应都将处于短缺状态。
All that demand has also made ASML a target. Substrate, a San Francisco startup founded by a protégé of Peter Thiel, has raised more than $100 million and been valued at over $1 billion on the claim that it can build a rival lithography machine. Separately, there have been reports that former ASML engineers in China have partly reverse-engineered the technology, a prospect with enormous geopolitical implications.
所有这些需求也使 ASML 成为了目标。旧金山初创公司 Substrate 由彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）的一位门生创立，该公司声称能够制造出竞争性的光刻机，目前已筹集超过 1 亿美元资金，估值超过 10 亿美元。此外，有报道称，中国的前 ASML 工程师已部分逆向工程了该技术，这一前景具有巨大的地缘政治影响。
Christophe Fouquet, who became ASML’s CEO in 2024 after more than a decade at the company, sat down with this editor on the rooftop deck of his Beverly Hills hotel Tuesday morning ahead of his appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference. Dressed in a blue suit and white shirt, he was relaxed — even when the conversation turned to the rivals. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Christophe Fouquet 在 ASML 工作了十多年后，于 2024 年出任首席执行官。周二上午，在出席米尔肯研究所全球会议（Milken Institute Global Conference）之前，他在比佛利山庄酒店的屋顶露台接受了本编辑的采访。他身穿蓝色西装，内搭白衬衫，神态轻松——即使在谈话转向竞争对手时也是如此。为简洁明了起见，本次采访内容经过了编辑。
Did you see the AI explosion coming?
你预见到 AI 的爆发了吗？
No, not at all. We worked very hard, but not with the idea that this would come. You went from a concept — something people thought would eventually arrive — to ChatGPT, which was really the first good example of what AI could do. And now I think we look at AI as the next revolution, not only industrial but societal. Did I see it coming? No. Sitting in the middle of it every day, sometimes we wake up in the morning and still check that what is happening is really happening.
完全没有。我们工作非常努力，但并没有预料到会有今天。从一个概念——人们认为最终会实现的东西——到 ChatGPT，这确实是 AI 能力的第一个好例子。现在我认为我们将 AI 视为下一次革命，不仅是工业上的，更是社会层面的。我预见到了吗？没有。每天身处其中，有时我们早上醒来，仍然会确认正在发生的事情是否真的在发生。
The big question everyone has is whether the supply chain can keep pace with demand. Can it?
大家最大的疑问是供应链能否跟上需求。能吗？
The demand is such that the market overall will be supply-limited for quite a bit. Right now, the biggest bottleneck seems to be in chip manufacturing. We, as an equipment supplier, follow our customers, and so far we’ve followed them pretty well — but we know we have to step up our entire supply chain and capacity. If you talk to the hyperscalers, I think they will tell you that for the next two, three, even five years, they’re not going to get enough chips.
需求如此之大，以至于整个市场在相当长一段时间内都将受限于供应。目前，最大的瓶颈似乎在于芯片制造。作为设备供应商，我们紧跟客户步伐，到目前为止我们做得还不错——但我们知道必须提升整个供应链和产能。如果你去问那些超大规模云服务商，我想他们会告诉你，在未来两、三甚至五年内，他们都无法获得足够的芯片。
TSMC made news recently saying your latest machines are too expensive. How do you respond?
台积电最近表示你们最新的机器太贵了。你对此有何回应？
An EUV system, if you look at the price, is going to be more expensive than a low-NA system, but the cost of making a wafer with this tool on some advanced layers will be cheaper. We can get 20%, 30% cost reduction. [Editor’s note: Both machines Fouquet is referring to here are EUV machines — the same fundamental technology. NA stands for numerical aperture, a measure of how finely a machine can focus light onto a chip. Low-NA EUV is the current generation; high-NA EUV is ASML’s newest generation, capable of printing even finer patterns but carrying a price tag of $350 million or more apiece. Fouquet is arguing that even though the new machine costs more, it produces chips more cheaply.]
如果你看价格，EUV 系统确实比低数值孔径（low-NA）系统更贵，但使用这种工具在某些先进层级上制造晶圆的成本会更低。我们可以实现 20% 到 30% 的成本降低。（编者注：Fouquet 这里提到的两种机器都是 EUV 机器，属于同一基础技术。NA 代表数值孔径，是衡量机器将光聚焦到芯片上精细程度的指标。低数值孔径 EUV 是当前一代；高数值孔径 EUV 是 ASML 的最新一代，能够打印更精细的图案，但每台价格高达 3.5 亿美元以上。Fouquet 的观点是，尽管新机器成本更高，但它生产芯片的成本更低。）
I get a lot of questions about whether it’s going to be this month or next month or the month after. And I usually say it doesn’t really matter, because we designed high-NA for the next 10, 20 years. You can go back to the press from 2016, 2017, and you’ll find the same quotes — low-NA EUV was very pricey. We know what happened after that. The same will happen with high-NA.
我经常被问到这（高数值孔径机器的普及）是这个月、下个月还是下下个月的事。我通常说这并不重要，因为我们设计高数值孔径是为了未来 10 到 20 年。你可以回顾 2016 年、2017 年的媒体报道，你会发现同样的言论——当时低数值孔径 EUV 也非常昂贵。我们知道后来发生了什么。高数值孔径也会经历同样的过程。
There’s a startup called Substrate, backed by Peter Thiel, claiming it can build a rival lithography machine. What do you think of it?
有一家由彼得·蒂尔支持的初创公司 Substrate，声称可以制造出竞争性的光刻机。你怎么看？
Wanting to have it and having it — that’s still a huge difference. The challenges of lithography are many. Being able to make an image is a starting point, but you need to make that image in very high quantity, at very low cost, at high speed, and with nanometer accuracy. I always say the only reason ASML could build an EUV machine is because 80% of it already existed, based on previous knowledge and products built over time. We had to solve one problem — getting EUV light — and that alone took 20 years. When you start from scratch, the challenge is enormous. I’ve seen a lot of claims. I’ve seen a few pictures. But we had our first EUV picture 30 years ago, and we still needed 20 more years of hard work to turn it into a manufacturing system.
想要拥有它和真正拥有它——这之间仍有巨大的鸿沟。光刻技术的挑战有很多。能够成像只是一个起点，但你需要以极高的产量、极低的成本、极快的速度和纳米级的精度来制造图像。我总是说，ASML 能够制造 EUV 机器的唯一原因是因为其 80% 的技术已经存在，是基于长期的知识积累和产品研发。我们当时必须解决一个问题——获得 EUV 光源——仅这一点就花了 20 年。当你从零开始时，挑战是巨大的。我见过很多声明，也见过几张照片。但我们 30 年前就有了第一张 EUV 图像，即便如此，我们仍需要 20 年的艰苦努力才能将其转化为制造系统。