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.
