How ASML's Fouquet will keep pace with AI

The Dutch company's machines are needed to make the chips that power ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence models, write Peter Elstrom, Sarah Jacob, and Tom Mackenzie from London and Amsterdam

- Peter Elstrom, Sarah Jacob, and Tom Mackenzie

ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet at the Dutch company's headquarters in Veldhoven.NYT

When Christophe Fouquet interviewed for a job at ASML Holding NV in 2007, he had an unusual request: Could he take a position one rung below what the Dutch company was offering?

He wanted to study the technical details of the new chip-making machines ASML sold to tech giants like Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co. After he was hired the next year, he spent weeks poring over the product catalog until he could recite the key features by heart.

"Even today when I meet with my customers, we talk about very specific things," says the 52-year-old, who took over as ASML's chief executive officer in 2024. "You need to understand what they do. You need to be able to explain what you are doing to solve their problem. That was the reason I said, 'Give me a bit of time to learn."

Today, much depends on Mr Fouquet and his company's ability to navigate technology's frontiers. ASML is the foundation on which much of the AI boom indeed much of the tech industry has been built over the past few years. It manufactures the machines needed to produce the most advanced chips for Nvidia Corp, which in turn run the artificial intelligence models for OpenAI, Microsoft Corp and pretty much every other competitor in the field. Its share at the premium end of this market is a cool 100%, higher than Nvidia's for AI chips or OpenAI's for chatbots.