US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has told ASML, the Dutch firm that builds the most important chipmaking machines on the planet, that Washington believes one of its most advanced tools may have slipped into China. If true, it would mark a serious breach of the export controls the US has spent years building to keep cutting-edge chip technology out of Beijing’s hands.The warning came across a series of recent meetings, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the story. Lutnick raised concerns directly with ASML’s senior leadership about its extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, the EUV systems that are the only tools on Earth capable of printing the most advanced semiconductor patterns. ASML has been barred from selling EUV to China since the first Trump administration.
Why an European company most people have never heard of matters so much
ASML isn’t a household name, but it sits at the center of the entire AI buildout. Its machines make the chips that TSMC manufactures for Nvidia and Apple. There is no second supplier, a monopoly that has pushed ASML’s market value into the neighborhood of $700 billion and made it Europe’s most valuable public company. The systems themselves are roughly the size of a school bus and weigh 180 tons, per Reuters.That scale is exactly why one missing machine would matter. A single EUV system in Chinese hands would represent one of the biggest cracks yet in the wall the US has built around advanced AI capability.
The company’s flat denial, and the evidence Washington won’t show
ASML isn’t budging. The company told Reuters it has never shipped an EUV machine to China, nor any component or module specially designed for one. It says it tracks every machine it has ever made, all either in use with monitored customers or dismantled and returned.The catch is that US officials have so far declined to produce proof. Senior administration figures told Bloomberg they have evidence ASML shipped EUV-related components and transport gear to China, but they haven’t shown it to Bloomberg or, it seems, to ASML. The Commerce Department didn’t say whether it has evidence of an actual machine on Chinese soil.CEO Christophe Fouquet addressed the China question in a TechCrunch interview weeks before this broke. His argument was simple: you can’t reverse-engineer a machine you’ve never had. ASML built an internal firewall years ago that walls its China-based staff off from EUV technology and training. Solving the one genuinely new problem, generating EUV light, took the company two decades on its own.
What’s at stake, and the bill waiting in the wings
There’s commercial logic in ASML’s denial too. The company expects roughly 20% of its 2026 revenue from already-permitted sales to China, mostly older deep ultraviolet tools. Risking the EUV ban over one illegal sale would put that money, and its standing as European industry’s most valuable monopoly, on the line.The pressure may not stop at EUV. A bipartisan bill moving through Congress would ban all DUV shipments to China. It cleared a key committee in April, and the Trump administration hasn’t taken a formal position.