ASML: planned lithography supply for 2027 and 2028 will not fully meet AI-driven demand
Customers ask about 2029–2030 orders
Confirmed
Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- 3 of 5
- Last verified
- 14 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra167 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5106 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Argon197 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7136 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 106 days before it.
Key facts
- Q3 2026: net sales €11.7B (€11,662M, a record), gross margin 57.5%, net income €5.0B (€4,960M); installed-base management sales €3.3B
- Q4 2026 guidance: net sales €14.2–15.2B, gross margin about 57%; full-year 2026: €44–45B, gross margin about 56%
- CEO Christophe Fouquet: ‘we now expect that our supply as currently planned for both 2027 and 2028 will not fully meet the demand of our customers’; ‘some customers are expressing an interest in placing orders with us for 2029 and even 2030’
- Earlier plan (Q2 release, July): add 30% to 2026 low-NA EUV capacity of about 65 systems for 2027, and study another 30% for 2028
- Q3 net bookings were not in the press-release text we read
What happened
ASML, the only maker of EUV lithography machines, reported a record quarter and warned that it cannot build enough tools for its customers’ 2027–2028 plans, which are driven by AI. Some customers are already asking about slots for 2029–2030.
Why it matters
Lithography capacity is one of the slowest-moving limits on how much AI compute can be built. ASML saying it will be short for two years is a signal from the bottom of the supply chain that chipmakers expect AI capex to last, a day after an Asian chip sell-off driven by bubble worries.
Sources
3 sources from 3 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
3 sources: 1 primary, 2 press
Primary
- ASML Q3 2026 results press release (SEC Form 6-K, Oct 14)sec.gov, official
Press
- Reuters: ASML forecasts Q4 sales above expectations on AI chip demandreuters.com, press
- CNBC: ASML Q3 earnings, AI demand, orders and capacitycnbc.com, press
Changes
- Filed (from ASML’s 6-K press release)