VELDHOVEN, Netherlands—ASML, a semiconductor industry and stock market giant, has to think smaller. Or maybe bigger.
It is building machines the size of double-decker buses, weighing over 200 tonnes, in its quest to produce beams of focused light that create the microscopic circuitry on computer chips used in everything from phones and laptops to cars and AI.
The company has enjoyed a rosy decade, its shares leaping 1,000 percent to take its value past 200 billion euros as it swept up most of the world’s business for these lithography systems.
It’s now preparing to roll out a new $400 million machine for next-generation chips which it hopes will be its flagship by the late 2020s but for now remains an engineering challenge….