The most important company in the world is a company you've never heard of
And it's in the Netherlands
Modern society since about 1970 has advanced based around the continued advancement of the microprocessor. This advancement has been measured and accurately predicted by something called “Moore’s Law.” Very simply it states that the number of transistors on microchips will double every two years, on average. So far, this has held very true, as you can see in the below graphic.
However, there was a time where it looked like Moore’s law was going to become impossible. To put it simply, lithography is the manner in which light is used to etch silicon wafers to make microchips. However, the wavelengths of light were too large to continue producing smaller and smaller transistors. A new technology was needed.
Enter extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV). It was long an experimental technology considered by many to be impossible. Many industry leaders abandoned all hope of ever achieving it except for a few. And one finally succeeded.
In 2018, a Dutch company named ASML delivered the first EUV based lithography machines to market and quite simply, it changed the world. A company named TSMC has built an entire business around them. Ever since, numerous companies such as Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, and even Intel have moved their chip manufacturing to TSMC, now worth $443 billion, all of which runs on ASML machines.
So every iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, NVIDIA graphics card, and AMD processor in the world is manufactured by TSMC using ASML hardware using a technology once thought impossible that ASML spent decades perfecting. Intel is still desperately playing catch up and has been forced to hire TSMC to build its own processors in order to do so.
Something you own was built by this company that you’ve never heard of. TSMC and ASML are the engines that now run the world economy. Without them, we’d be dead in the water.
Here’s where it gets especially interesting. The US has banned export of ASML’s machines to China of course, who desperately want to get their hands on one. These machines are so large it takes 20 eighteen wheelers and 3 fully loaded 747s to move just one. Almost all of TSMC’s capacity is in Taiwan and part of the reason Beijing has become more and more interested in the region is because of all this extremely strategic chip making capacity that powers the entire Western world. If China invades and we lose TSMC, the economic and societal hit to the entire world will be extremely dramatic. It’s hard to understate the national security importance of TSMC’s manufacturing facilities and thus, ASML.
ASML’s machines themselves are insanely complex and made up of parts from dozens of highly specialized items from suppliers from all over the world. They are among the most intricate machines ever made by man and are truly wonders of the world. For all its genius, ASML is worth $259 billion. Just some random company in the Netherlands worth more than Intel, General Electric, CVS, Shell, Toyota, Disney, Comcast, Wells Fargo, Netflix, AT&T, and many more household names.
ASML is singlehandedly responsible for making all of the advanced devices you use on a daily basis possible and will continue to do so for the future. And it amazes me that most people have never heard of them.
If you want to read a fascinating article going into more depth about ASML and their machines, here’s one: