The Chip Insider®–ASML’s Mistral AI investment strategy

ASML buying into an AI company might seem odd on the surface. Let’s reverse engineer the strategy to reveal why the world’s leading semiconductor lithography manufacturer would make this investment. On the surface, it would seem to be fairly easy to know how ASML has typically kept its acquisitions focused on emergent companies inside lithography’s vertical stack since Brion. But that’s been changing in recent years. So, let’s start with ASML’s investment history:

• 1984: ASML itself is born from a Philips divestiture acquired by ASM International
• 2000: SVG for $1.6B…
• 2006: Brion $270M…
• 2012: Cymer, EUR 1.95B…
• 2016: Hermes Microvision, TWD 100B…
• 2017: Carl Zeiss, EUR 1B for a 24.9% stake…
• 2019: Mapper Lithography…
• 2020: Berliner Glas…
• 2021: InPhocal...
• 2023: Smart Photonics…

2025: Mistral AI “strategic partnership.” ASML’s EUR 1.3B investment puts it in the lead of Mistral AI’s Series C funding round. Christophe Fouquet described it as “this strategic partnership with Mistral AI, which goes beyond a traditional vendor-client relationship, is the best way to capture this significant opportunity.” The Mistral AI investment looks to be many things. On a simplistic level it’s a national security play for the EU, which is sorely lacking in AI and even missing the search and social media technology giants created early in this century. Another simplistic level is that ASML has a strategic imperative to have an AI investment.

On a deeper level, the Brion and Microvision components need to go to the next level of applying attention models. Not LLMs, but VLMs (Vision Language Models). Computational lithography is solidly based on physics and theory… The bane of lithography … VLMs can take this to the next level and fully automate it with IGMs (Image Generation Models), which are more modern versions of what Brion pioneered. So, the Mistral AI investment folds right into ASML’s vertical stack investment strategy…

Dan’s Book Shelf: Reflect & Imagine 20 Years of ASML by ASML accessible at ChipHistory.org. ASML's architects: The story of the engineers who shaped the world's most powerful chip machines by René Raaijmakers. Focus: The ASML way - Inside the power struggle over the most complex machine on earth by Marc Hijink.

Maxims Jim Morgan’s personal guidelines for partnerships

"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." – Winston Churchill