As Christophe Fouquet When he takes over as CEO of Europe’s most valuable technology company on April 24, he will take control not just of a single company but also of an entire industry responsible for a vital part of modern life: chips.
Netherlands-based ASML makes one of the world’s most complex machines, used by chipmakers such as Intel and TSMC to produce the advanced microchips needed to power today’s smartphones, cars and data centers. Fouquet will assume leadership of ASML’s approximately 40,000 employees and oversee an extensive network of more than 5,000 specialty suppliers, including the German companies Zeiss and Trumpf, whose lasers and mirrors enable ASML’s machines to project tiny patterns onto microchips that are small are enough to be measured in the nanometer range (a millionth of a millimeter).
Fouquet, a 16-year ASML veteran, must maintain the company’s technological edge. His most advanced machines have no competition. “I have worked with Christophe for years and look forward to continuing our great relationship as we deliver leading lithography solutions,” said Ryan Russell, corporate vice president of Foundry Lithography Technology Development at Intel. But Fouquet, who has publicly sold himself as a continuity candidate, also has to steer ASML through an escalating geopolitical power struggle over chips.
“The company must manage its position at the center of technology tensions between China and the West,” says Chris Miller, author of “Of Chip War: The battle for the world’s most critical technology. Fouquet declined to speak to WIRED for this story.
These tensions became public in 2018 when the US began pressuring the Dutch government to prevent ASML’s technology from being shipped to China, a key market for the company’s machines. The following year, ASML was banned from selling its most advanced extreme ultraviolet lithography systems to Chinese customers. Instead of reversing this strategy, US President Joe Biden expanded it and extended restrictions to ASML’s less advanced equipment. This year, the US increased pressure on the Dutch to prevent ASML from even servicing tools that the company has already sold to China.
In June, Fouquet spoke out in favor of international cooperation in the chip industry. “We at ASML do not believe that decoupling is possible. We believe this will be extremely difficult and extremely expensive,” he told Nikkei Asia.
“Some feel that the Dutch government did not advocate enough for ASML and that the Dutch government gave in to American pressure and basically restricted ASML because the Americans wanted it that way,” says Tobias Gehrke, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Nevertheless, analysts doubt that any single European country could withstand this pressure. “ASML is too big for the Netherlands,” says Rob de Wijk, founder of the Hague Center for Strategic Studies. “This is a power game, and the individual countries, including Germany, are simply too small for this game.” Instead, he is part of a growing group – including the outgoing CEO of ASML – that is demanding that export licenses for strategic sectors be granted by the European Union to protect companies like ASML from being pushed around between superpowers. “Let Brussels do it and let them do the power politics.”