US officials allege ASML’s EUV lithography machine may have reached China; Dutch firm denies any shipment

The US Commerce Department, through Secretary Howard Lutnick, has told ASML executives it has concerns that one of ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines may have been shipped to China, violating long-standing export controls that have barred such sales since the first Trump administration.

ASML, a Dutch company, denies that any EUV machine has ever been in China. The company says it tracks every machine it has shipped and that all are either in active use with monitored customers or have been dismantled and returned. ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet has stated that the firm built internal firewalls separating employees with access to EUV technology from those without, and that China-based staff are intentionally excluded from EUV-related work.

The US government has not publicly provided evidence of an actual EUV system in China, nor has it shared any with ASML. A senior Commerce Department official told Bloomberg the government has evidence of EUV-related components and transport equipment being shipped to China, but declined to provide details to Bloomberg or ASML.

ASML argues that reverse-engineering an EUV machine is effectively impossible without having had access to one, citing the machine’s complexity and the decades-long effort required to develop the technology. Fouquet has also emphasized that ASML’s ability to build EUV machines relies on 80% prior knowledge and a 20-year effort to solve the core challenge of generating EUV light.

A bipartisan bill moving through Congress would expand current export controls to include ASML’s older deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography tools, which account for roughly a fifth of the company’s expected 2026 revenue. The bill cleared a key committee in April, but the Trump administration has not taken a formal position on it.

The Commerce Department has committed up to $150 million in taxpayer funds to xLight, a startup developing next-generation light-source technology that has been described as a potential long-term challenge to ASML’s EUV monopoly. ASML has stated it does not see xLight’s technology as necessary to maintain its lead, though the company’s leadership has not publicly linked the federal investment to its recent scrutiny of ASML’s export controls.