ASML Raises 2026 Forecast and Promises 30% More Chip-Tool Capacity as High-NA EUV Goes High-Volume
AMSTERDAM, July 15 (Tech Desk) — ASML told investors on Wednesday it now expects 2026 revenue of €43 billion to €45 billion, a jump from the €36–40 billion range it set earlier this year. The Dutch company, the only maker of the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) machines that print today's most advanced processors, also said it will grow capacity by about a third in each of the next two years. The move directly answers a worry that has hung over the AI build-out: that ASML itself had become the choke point slowing the whole supply chain.
The numbers landed well above what analysts modelled. Second-quarter sales reached €9.33 billion against a consensus of €8.80 billion, and net income came in at €2.92 billion versus the €2.62 billion expected, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters. Shares rose 3.7% to €1,613 in Amsterdam morning trade and have gained roughly 75% since January. ASML is Europe's most valuable listed company at about €600 billion.
A second forecast hike in nine months
This is the second time in 2026 that ASML has lifted its outlook. Chief executive Christophe Fouquet called customer demand for lithography tools "extremely strong" and said buyers keep pulling forward their own expansion plans. That gives ASML longer sight lines into orders, which in turn lets it commit to building more machines.
"Our customers in turn continue to accelerate their capacity expansion plans ... providing ASML with increased visibility into longer-term demand," Fouquet said in the company statement. ASML's own customers read like a roll call of the industry: TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are all spending to add lines.
High-NA EUV prints its first high-volume logic part
One day before the earnings call, ASML said its High-NA EUV platform reached a new readiness milestone: it has now supported the first high-volume logic product. High-NA is the next step in lithography, using a sharper lens to draw finer circuitry for the sub-2-nanometre nodes that leading foundries are racing toward. The tools are enormous and expensive — each can run past $350 million — and until now they had been proved mainly in labs and pilot lines.
Moving a product into high-volume manufacturing is the moment a new tool stops being a science project and starts shipping real silicon. For the fabs that must stay on the node roadmap, that shift matters more than any single quarterly print.
Intel puts Panther Lake on the new tool
Fouquet confirmed that Intel will use ASML's High-NA machine to make some of its most advanced "Panther Lake" processors, a laptop and client chip due to reach the market in the coming cycles. It is the first time the technology has been tied to a high-volume logic product at a customer.
For Intel, the bet is part of a wider attempt to win external foundry work and prove its process tech can match TSMC's. For ASML, a marquee customer putting High-NA into volume production is the strongest possible validation of a decade of engineering.
Capacity booked solid through 2027
ASML said it intends to expand capacity for its flagship EUV tools by nearly a third per year, and that almost all of the extra EUV output through 2027 is already spoken for. It plans a similar ramp for deep-ultraviolet (DUV) tools, the workhorses used for less advanced chips and for many Chinese buyers.
Chief financial officer Roger Dassen told reporters the build-out also accounts for a new customer, Terafab, the Texas chip venture tied to Elon Musk that is meant to supply parts to SpaceX and Tesla. Adding a fresh, deep-pocketed buyer to the order book only tightens an already tight schedule.
Analysts took the guidance as a clearance of the doubts that had weighed on the stock. "Blow-out results across the board," said Michael Roeg of Degroof Petercam. JPMorgan's team argued the report should help ASML close a valuation gap with U.S. peers, noting the company is effectively guiding to around 30% growth for the next two years after a flat stretch in 2023–2025.
China slips to a fifth of sales
Export rules still shape who can buy what. ASML is barred from shipping EUV machines and its best DUV systems to China under U.S.-led restrictions, though it does sell lesser DUV gear there. Dassen reiterated that Chinese customers should make up about 20% of 2026 sales — lower as a share than in 2024 and 2025, when China was the company's largest market, but higher in absolute terms as the total pie grows.
Demand from Chinese logic-chip makers remains firm, he said, fed by domestic needs in power grids, smartphones, computers and local AI work. U.S. lawmakers have floated bills that could tighten the screw further, a risk ASML lists openly.
What the bottleneck relief means for fabs
For two years, equipment lead times and ASML's own build rate were cited as the reason new AI capacity could not come online faster. Easing that constraint helps the broader tool chain, from deposition to etching vendors, as one analyst noted. TSMC, the contract maker behind Nvidia's GPUs, can only ship the chips the data-center boom wants if the lithography step keeps pace.
The relief also lands as Washington and Brussels push to localize chip supply. The U.S. CHIPS Act and the EU's own subsidy programs have dozens of fabs in flight, and each one needs ASML tools on the floor before it can pattern a single wafer. More capacity at Veldhoven means more of those lines can light up on schedule.
Read the full earnings release from ASML here, and Reuters' market write-up here. For the AI demand that sits behind all this spending, see our coverage in the AI category, and the related foundry results in our earlier report on TSMC's record quarter. The wider shift of inference work back toward local sites is tracked in Cloud & Edge Computing.
The next read on the sector comes fast: ASML's order intake each quarter is the clearest leading indicator the industry has. If the booked-through-2027 claim holds, the question shifts from "can ASML build enough?" to "can its customers staff and stock the fabs fast enough to use it?"