The CEO of Europe’s most valuable company has put on the record what U.S. chip-war architects have spent four years refusing to hear: the harder Washington pushes, the faster China will build its own. In a rare interview on the sidelines of a technology event in Antwerp, ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet told Reuters on May 20 that further restrictions on the lower-tech DUV lithography tools ASML still sells to China would only accelerate China’s drive for domestic equivalents. The DUV tools at issue, he noted, are based on technology introduced in 2015—"eight generations of chip technology ago.” “If I put you in a desert and tell you you’re not going to have access to food anymore—how long does it take you to make your own garden?” Fouquet asked. “It’s a matter of survival.”
His remarks come as U.S. lawmakers, through the MATCH Act introduced in April, seek to force allies to align with U.S. controls or face unilateral measures. The Dutch government has formally objected to the bill’s “extraterritorial” reach. China accounted for 33% of ASML’s system sales last year; the company’s 2026 guidance puts the share at 20%, and in Q1 it fell to 19%.
The market shift is visible elsewhere. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC on May 21 that his company has “largely conceded” the China AI chip market to Huawei: “We’ve evacuated that market.” Meanwhile, Shanghai AI Laboratory researchers unveiled an AI-driven platform for high-purity KrF photoresist resin earlier this month, and Alibaba’s chip subsidiary T-Head unveiled the Zhenwu M890, claiming three times the performance of its prior-generation accelerator. The garden, in other words, is already growing.