Veldhoven

Veldhoven is a municipality of around 45,000 people in the North Brabant province of the southern Netherlands, located adjacent to Eindhoven in the Brainport Eindhoven technology corridor. The town is home to the global headquarters and primary R&D and manufacturing campus of ASML, the world's only maker of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines and the dominant supplier of deep ultraviolet (DUV) systems. ASML's Veldhoven campus houses its Board of Management, core engineering teams, and the assembly lines for EUV and DUV machines, each shipping with hundreds of thousands of components sourced from over 800 suppliers. On 15 July 2026 ASML raised full-year guidance to €43-45bn, its second raise in two quarters, on a Q2 of €9.3bn net sales and 86 lithography systems sold, up from 67 in Q1; for the first time this year it dropped the export-control hedge language that had shadowed its Q1 numbers.

ASML has committed to a major campus expansion in Veldhoven, with a facility planned to cover the equivalent of 50 football fields adjacent to its existing site, and is separately adding 30% to its 2026 low-numerical-aperture EUV capacity for delivery in 2027. The expansion reflects both the surge in AI-driven chip demand and the Dutch government's ambition to keep ASML rooted in the Netherlands despite competition from other nations seeking to attract the company. In Q1 2026, ASML posted net profits of €2.76 billion, a 15% year-on-year increase, underscoring the economic weight of the single Veldhoven campus in global semiconductor supply.

Veldhoven's global importance extends FAR beyond its physical scale. Because ASML holds a near-monopoly on EUV lithography, the Veldhoven campus is effectively the chokepoint for advanced chip manufacturing worldwide, even though its expanded capacity ships to fabs in Taiwan, South Korea and the United States rather than to any European leading-edge plant. Export decisions made by the Dutch government about ASML's DUV and EUV shipments from Veldhoven directly affect China's semiconductor capability, US national-security strategy, and European tech-sovereignty ambitions simultaneously.