22SEP

High-NA goes to volume at Intel Foundry

2 min read

10:47UTC

ASML and Intel Foundry said on 8 September that High-NA lithography can now be used in high-volume manufacturing, with more than 1 million wafers processed on the tool class to date.

← Back to Germany's AI champion merges into Cohere Jump to analysis ↓

TechnologyAssessed

Key takeaway

Intel now runs High-NA in volume, on machines only one Dutch company builds.

In a joint statement issued on 8 September 2026, ASML and Intel Foundry said High-NA (high numerical aperture) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, the tool class that prints the finest features on advanced logic chips, can now be used in high-volume manufacturing at Intel Foundry. More than 1 million wafers have been processed on it to date, across early tool certification and testing, research and development, and production on select layers for a subset of Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 processors. Overlay, throughput and availability are meeting Intel Foundry's expectations, the two companies say. ¹

ASML, based in Veldhoven in the Netherlands, is the only company in the world that builds these machines. Its chief executive, Christophe Fouquet, credits Intel Foundry with shipping the first high-volume logic product manufactured with High-NA. ² The same release sets out how customers reach that point without new masks: Intel Foundry offers reticle stitching and process design kit support that let designers use High-NA EUV with the industry's standard 6-inch mask rather than wait for the move to a 6x12-inch format. ³ ASML separately announced an expanded collaboration with Samsung Electronics on next-generation manufacturing the same day. ⁴

Intel cannot buy this equipment from anyone else, and neither can Samsung. Europe holds one chokepoint in the semiconductor stack, inside one company, and that chokepoint is currently being spent equipping fabs owned elsewhere. ASML's own numbers carry the harder evidence. ASML raised its 2026 guidance to €43 billion to 45 billion in July and dropped its export-control hedge , and on 8 September two of the largest logic manufacturers in the world announced what they can now do with Dutch equipment neither of them can source anywhere. On this tool class, the dependency runs towards Veldhoven.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

EUV lithography machines use extreme ultraviolet light to print the tiny patterns on computer chips. High-NA is the newest, most precise generation of this technology, and ASML, based in the Netherlands, is the only company in the world that makes it. On 8 September, ASML and Intel said this new tool is now being used to make chips in large commercial quantities for the first time, inside an Intel factory. Only Intel has reached this stage so far. Europe supplies the machine that makes the world's most advanced chips, but the first factory to mass-produce chips with it is American.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The gating constraint has been mask size, not exposure-tool throughput. High-NA's larger optical field was designed around a 6x12-inch reticle format that most customers have not adopted; ASML's 8 September announcement includes a reticle-stitching technique that lets Intel Foundry keep using standard 6-inch masks.

That workaround, not additional manufacturing capacity, is what let one customer reach high-volume production ahead of the wider mask-format transition.

What could happen next?

Meaning
ASML's tool monopoly does not by itself determine which country hosts the first high-volume use of each new lithography generation.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources from Belgium

Belgium

Primary parallel: ASML shipped its first High-NA EUV tool, the EXE:5000, to Intel in December 2023. Reaching high-volume logic production roughly three years later mirrors the multi-year gap between first EUV tool shipment and volume adoption in the early 2010s, when lithography readiness consistently outran customer qualification timelines.

Counter-parallel: Standard EUV ramped at multiple foundries in parallel from the outset. High-NA's first high-volume customer is Intel alone; Samsung remains at the collaboration stage on the same day's announcement.

Consensus view: ASML and Intel Foundry's joint 8 September statement puts more than one million wafers processed on High-NA EUV tools to date, spanning tool certification, R&D and volume production on select layers of Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) chips, with overlay, throughput and availability meeting Intel Foundry's own targets.

Counter-view: The same day, ASML separately announced only a collaboration expansion with Samsung on next-generation manufacturing, not high-volume production. Bruegel's 19 May analysis found Europe structurally dependent on US or Chinese computing infrastructure regardless of policy, noting Chinese domestic chips already power 41% of China's data centres.

Key tension: Whether ASML's tooling monopoly converts into European fabrication capacity at all, given the first high-volume logic customer for its most advanced tool is a US foundry, not a European one.

Sources:European Commission

Mentions:ASML →Christophe Fouquet →Samsung Electronics →Intel →Bruegel →Netherlands →China →Veldhoven →

First Reported In

Update #15 · Mistral closes EUR 3bn; Luxembourg buys in

European Commission· 8 Sept 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

ASML booms, Europe's fab gap holds

ASML's July guidance raise and dropped export-control hedge preceded its High-NA volume-production announcement.

Occurred 15 Jul 2026

Read story →

This Event

High-NA goes to volume at Intel Foundry

The one tool class no company outside the Netherlands can build has entered volume production, and it did so inside an American fab.

Different Perspectives

ESMC (TSMC-majority joint venture)

ESMC's president said construction remains on schedule after the Dresden fab's topping-out ceremony on 14 September, reported by Focus Taiwan with first process equipment still targeted for the second half of 2027. No first-party ESMC or TSMC statement independently confirms the claim, and the fab remains 70% TSMC-owned inside a project Europe cites as its semiconductor sovereignty case.

Civo

Civo sold out its Navigate London sovereignty conference on 22 September, drawing about 800 attendees including a sitting MP, a former defence procurement minister and sponsors led by Nokia. Companies House confirms chief executive Mark Boost as Civo's sole person with significant control, British and UK-resident, which answers the ownership question the conference itself is arguing matters.

United States Trade Representative

USTR opened its 2027 National Trade Estimate comment window on 14 September, naming the EU among markets with restrictive technology requirements and inviting submissions on cross-border data rules. The window follows Trump's 24 July Section 301 order into EU digital rules by seven weeks, and unused comments are kept, in USTR's own wording, for future negotiations.

Cohere

Cohere published the deal on 16 September without naming a regulator, running the merged company globally under its own brand from dual Toronto and Berlin headquarters. It pledges the combined company will deliver sovereign AI on STACKIT, the Schwarz Group's German platform, aimed at government buyers weighing that offer against Berlin's own anchor-customer signal.

Germany (Federal Government)

Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger called the Cohere talks "a very strong signal" and signalled Berlin's readiness to become an anchor customer, now its main lever since equity sits with Cohere. The German side secured a co-headquarters and two Cohere C-suite seats, but the protective-rights terms it pressed for in July remain undisclosed.

Poland

Poland leads a self-announced AI Gigafactory consortium with a EUR 100 million phase-one commitment, matched by Czechia and joined by Hungary at EUR 25 million. EuroHPC has confirmed no consortium for the call closing 12 November, so the bloc exists only in national announcements so far.