ASML Says It Sold Zero Chipmaking Machines to European Customers Last Quarter

ASML Holding, the Dutch company that makes the machines without which no advanced computer chip in the world can be manufactured, sold none of its systems to customers in Europe in the second quarter of 2026, according to a senior company executive. The disclosure, made at an industry event in Amsterdam on Monday and first reported by Dutch news outlets on Tuesday, is one of the starkest signs yet that the European Union's three-year push to rebuild a domestic chip industry is falling short of its own targets.

Frank Heemskerk, ASML's executive vice president for global public affairs, told the gathering that the company currently has no European customers placing orders for its lithography systems. "We are not selling anything in Europe at all," he said. "That is because Europe is not investing, and no chip factories are being built here."

Zero share of a record quarter

The comments came as ASML is enjoying one of the strongest periods in its history. The company's own second-quarter 2026 results show total net sales of €9.3 billion and net income of €2.9 billion, with 86 new lithography systems shipped and a gross margin of 54 percent. Chief executive Christophe Fouquet attributed the strength to "ongoing AI-related investments," which he said are pushing customers to accelerate capacity expansion for advanced logic and memory chips.

None of that demand, however, is coming from Europe. Heemskerk said the region accounted for zero percent of ASML's net system sales in the quarter, down from a combined one percent across Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2025. By contrast, South Korea was ASML's largest market in the first half of 2026, followed by Taiwan and China — the three places where the world's leading chipmakers, Samsung, TSMC and a cluster of Chinese foundries, are actually building capacity.

Heemskerk said Washington, Beijing and New Delhi are all actively courting ASML to shift more of its operations their way. "China and India roll out the reddest of red carpets for me," he said, while U.S. officials have pressed the company to double the share of its research conducted domestically. "We conduct a quarter of our research in the U.S. and they say, 'can't that be half?'" he said. "We need to scale up our production. We aren't doing that solely in the Netherlands."

"We are not selling anything at all in Europe. That's because Europe isn't investing and because no chip factories are being built there." — Frank Heemskerk, ASML executive vice president for global public affairs

A target already written off

The remarks land three years into the life of the European Chips Act, the legislation Brussels passed in September 2023 to strengthen the continent's semiconductor research, manufacturing and skills base after pandemic-era shortages exposed how dependent European carmakers and electronics firms were on Asian and American suppliers. The European Commission's own tracking shows 18 state-aid decisions approved so far, unlocking more than €32 billion in combined public and private investment.

That has not been enough to move the needle on the Act's headline ambition of doubling Europe's share of global chip production value to 20 percent by 2030. The European Court of Auditors' special report on the strategy concluded the bloc is highly unlikely to get there, projecting a share of only around 11.7 percent by the deadline and estimating that closing the gap would require roughly €251 billion in additional investment — far beyond what governments and private industry have committed. The setback was compounded in 2025 when Intel cancelled its planned €30 billion fabrication plant in Magdeburg, Germany, after concluding it could not secure enough committed customers to justify the capacity.

The Commission has already moved to draft a follow-up. In June, it proposed what industry has dubbed Chips Act 2.0, part of a wider "Technological Sovereignty Package" also covering artificial intelligence, cloud computing and open-source software. The revised proposal shifts emphasis toward stimulating demand, cutting permitting timelines to a maximum of 12 months, and funding what the Commission calls "grand challenge" projects for chips used in AI systems. It is not yet law: EU institutions are targeting the second quarter of 2027 to finish negotiations, and no dedicated budget figure has been attached to the plan.

Where the machines are going instead

While Europe waits on legislation, ASML has been striking deals elsewhere. In May, the company signed a memorandum of understanding with Tata Electronics to support the Indian conglomerate's planned $11 billion, 300-millimeter semiconductor fab in Dholera, Gujarat — training local technicians and building supply-chain infrastructure around the plant. It is the kind of greenfield commitment that has become rare on ASML's home continent, even as the company remains, by market value, Europe's most valuable listed company.

The immediate losers of a zero-sales quarter are the European chipmakers and contract manufacturers that were supposed to be the Chips Act's beneficiaries — firms such as STMicroelectronics, Infineon and GlobalFoundries' Dresden operation, along with the state and national governments that pledged co-financing for new fabs that in several cases have yet to break ground. More broadly, the pattern feeds a wider argument, increasingly heard in Brussels and national capitals, that Europe's semiconductor ambitions are being outpaced by the scale of subsidies and demand growth in Asia and the United States.

Heemskerk framed the choice ASML now faces plainly: with EUV and other lithography capacity in high demand and increasingly scarce, the company has to decide where to put its next round of expansion, and Europe is not currently making the case. "What matters to ASML is that Europe steps up," he said, according to reporting from the Amsterdam event. ASML's own guidance points to further capacity growth regardless of where it lands — the company has said it plans to raise low-NA EUV output by 30 percent for 2027 and is evaluating a similar increase for 2028 to meet AI-driven demand.

What happens next

No European Commission or Dutch government official had issued a formal response to Heemskerk's remarks as of Tuesday. The practical test will come as Chips Act 2.0 moves through negotiation over the coming months, and as national governments in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands decide whether to attach new co-investment commitments to fabrication projects that have so far struggled to reach final investment decisions. Until a customer in Europe places an order, ASML's newest machines will keep shipping to Hsinchu, Pyeongtaek and Shanghai rather than to any site on the continent where the company itself is headquartered.