ASML in the AI stack

The business and what the filings show

ASML is the only supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography tools, which every leading-edge chip factory needs. It reported €32.7B of sales for 2025, +16%, at a 53% gross margin, in its annual 20-F.

Its customer base is very concentrated: its largest customer accounted for 23.9% of 2025 sales. ASML’s orders reflect how much new leading-edge and memory capacity the chipmakers plan to build, which makes it a leading indicator for the whole stack, a year or two ahead of chip revenue.

ASML’s business is broader than AI (phones, PCs and cars all need advanced chips) and is shaped by export rules on sales to China. For an AI investor, it is a way to own the build-out of capacity rather than the use of it.

How AI shows up in the numbers

AI shows up at ASML one step removed: as orders from chipmakers adding leading-edge logic capacity for accelerators and memory capacity for HBM. Because tools are ordered well before factories open, ASML’s order book is an early signal of how long the industry expects AI demand to last. Its own investment in Mistral AI, disclosed in its 20-F, also gives it a direct stake in one of Europe’s model developers.

For scale, ASML’s revenue over fiscal 2025 equals 6% of the $566B the five largest buyers spent on capital projects over their latest four quarters (comparing euros with dollars, so read it as a rough proportion). Their capex rose +81% on the year before, while ASML’s revenue grew +16%: slower than the spending, so it is capturing a smaller share of each new capex dollar, or more of its business sits outside the build-out.

ASML is a foreign private issuer, so it files an annual report on Form 20-F rather than quarterly 10-Qs, and its interim results are furnished on Form 6-K without the same structured data. This page therefore uses fiscal-year figures, in EUR as reported, and the quarterly comparisons on other company pages don’t apply. The next 20-F updates the figures here.

How it talks about AI

As a foreign private issuer, ASML doesn’t furnish the 8-K earnings releases we read for US companies, so its annual report on Form 20-F is the place it describes AI on the record. Statements in a 20-F carry more weight than a press release or an earnings call: they are part of a filing the company signs and can be held to. The sentences below are quoted from its latest 20-F.

Read them for two things: how directly the company ties its growth to AI, and how much it is willing to quantify. A company that names AI as its main growth driver is making a claim its revenue mix can be checked against in the next filing; one that says AI’s effect is hard to measure is telling you its numbers won’t isolate it.

The figure to set these statements against is ASML’s own growth: revenue +16% in fiscal 2025 at a 53% gross margin. If AI is driving the business as described, the next 20-F should show it in the mix of revenue by product or customer, and in margins that hold up as volumes grow.

• On AI demand: “At first, we believed that AI would drive demand from only a limited portion of our customer base.” 20-F, February 25, 2026
• On AI demand: “At the end of the year, we saw that new and significant demand for AI was starting to fuel capacity build-up across our broad customer base a powerful trend that we believe will continue in 2026 and beyond.” 20-F, February 25, 2026
• Investment in Mistral AI: “We have invested 1.3 billion in Mistral AI as lead investor and hold an approximately 11% share on a fully diluted basis in the company.” 20-F, February 25, 2026

The trend in the numbers

Over the 5 fiscal years shown, ASML’s highest revenue was €32.7B in 2025 and its highest gross margin 53% in 2025. The latest year set the revenue record.

Year by year, ASML’s revenue changed +14% in 2022, +30% in 2023, +3% in 2024, +16% in 2025. Growth accelerated in the latest year.

Its gross margin moved from 53% in 2021 to 53% in 2025, essentially unchanged. It spent €1.6B on capital projects in its latest year, 5% of revenue, and generated €12.7B from operations.

Where it sits in the stack

ASML sits in the foundry, equipment and design tools layer of the AI stack. It is paid by the chips and memory and networking layers.

Among the 10 companies in this layer on our map, it ranks number 2 by revenue. Its gross margin of 53% compares with 52% for the layer as a whole, close to the layer average. The full layer analysis is on the foundry & tools page.

Latest four quarters for 10-Q filers; latest fiscal year for 20-F filers. Companies under $100 million of revenue are left out.

ASML reports annually on Form 20-F, so it is compared with its layer on its latest fiscal year; the US-listed companies in its layer grew +21% over their latest four quarters combined.

What has to go right, and what could go wrong

What has to go right. Chipmakers have to keep adding leading-edge and memory capacity, which requires its EUV tools, and export rules have to leave enough of its market open.

What could go wrong. Its orders depend on a few customers’ capacity plans, so a pause in leading-edge investment, or tighter export controls, would show up in ASML’s orders before it showed up in chip demand.

These describe the conditions the business depends on, as the filings show them. They are not a view on the stock.

Through the lens of Investing in AI

Rob May’s book offers six mental models for telling AI moats from traps. The one most useful for ASML’s layer is “AI changes markets and corporate strategy”: When creation gets cheap, choke points move. Like the internet shifting newspaper profits to discovery, AI pushes moats toward coordination and control points. The winners sit at the new choke point, not the best AI story.

The question it asks of any company is: What becomes scarce in this value chain as AI makes the work abundant? Applied to ASML, the filings on this page are the place to start: the margin trend shows whether it holds scarce value or passes it through, the customer and financing disclosures show who it depends on, and the commitments show what it has promised before the revenue arrives.

Customers and concentration

US companies must disclose any customer that accounts for 10% or more of revenue, and foreign filers usually describe their largest customers. Concentration matters because a company’s growth is only as durable as the handful of buyers behind it, and in the AI stack those buyers are often the same few companies.

• “Total net sales to our largest customer amounted to 7,796.7 million, or 23.9% of total net sales in 2025, compared with 4,682.4 million, or 16.6% of total net sales in 2024.” 20-F, February 25, 2026

Commitments and backlog

• Backlog. ASML doesn’t report a comparable total of remaining performance obligations in its XBRL data.

What to watch

ASML’s next annual report on Form 20-F will cover the fiscal year after the one ending December 31, 2025; foreign private issuers must file it within four months of the fiscal year end, so expect it by around April 30, 2027. Interim results arrive earlier on Form 6-K, without the structured data this page is built from.

• Orders, especially for EUV tools, a leading indicator for chip capacity a year or two ahead.
• Customer concentration, since a pause by one large customer moves its order book.
• Export rules affecting sales to China, which shape how much of its market stays open.
• Its place in the next quarterly AI Stack Report, which updates every company on the map from the new filings.

Figures from ASML’s SEC filings, latest period ended December 31, 2025. Other companies: all company pages.