South Korean semiconductor company SK Hynix said on Tuesday it plans will be buying upto $8 billion of ASML’s chipmaking tools as the race heats up among tech and manufacturing firms to develop industry-level expertise in AI first.
The update comes amid an increase in demand for chips and energy to help power the new wave of AI products and services at the enterprise leve.
Elon Musk and Larry Ellison have both voiced out concerns that the existing chip supply may not be enough to power future needs in AI. The majority of tech firms—NVIDIA, Tesla, Oracle—depend on chipmaking firms such as TSMC and ASML to help power their own products and investments.
While the majority of tech firms entering AI have opted to rely on leading chip manufacturers to help supply their needs, certain companies have decided to build chip manufacturing facilities. For instance, Musk recently announced the TeraFab initiative, a planned facility to be built by Tesla and SpaceX in Texas that is aiming to produce 100 to 200 million AI and memory chips per year.
Demand for ASML lithography machines remains strong
ASML is a leading manufacturer of EUV Lithography tools, which is the machinery used to produce chips of certain specifications suitable for AI applications.
TSMC is a huge buyer of these chipmaking machines and is considered a huge manufacturer of chips, which are supplied to Silicon Valley tech firms and other companies around the world, making designs supplied from these tech firms and not manufacturing its own products. Samsung and Intel are also buyers of ASML’s machinery
The purchase of ASML’s products would bolster SK Hynix’s chip manufacturing capabilities and position it alongside Samsung and Intel, allowing it to bring the chipmaking process in-house for its own purposes.
ASML recorded revenue of 9.7 billion euros for Q4 2025 and full-year revenue of 32.7 billion euros, suggesting that demand is still strong for its EUV lithography tools.
At the time of writing, ASML shares were priced at $1369.2.