ASML: A Rule Breaker Test of Lasting Leadership
In the early 2000s, ASML (NASDAQ:ASML) committed to a technology that much of the microchip industry doubted would ever work. Extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV, prints chip circuits with light so fine it has to travel through a vacuum and bounce off some of the smoothest mirrors ever made.
If you get it wrong, you’ve spent billions on a machine nobody can use. ASML made the investment in the early 2000s, knowing full well it would take many years to pay off.
Martin van den Brink, an engineer who’d been there almost from the start, kept pushing. He’s said the company came close to bankruptcy several times in its early years. The bet paid off, though, and today, nearly every leading-edge chip comes off an ASML machine.
Source: www.fool.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.