ASML Holding reported record fourth quarter and full year results, supported by strong AI related demand for its chip making equipment. The company announced job cuts alongside a €12b share buyback and a significant dividend increase.

AMSTERDAM, Jan 28 (Reuters) - ASML has become Europe's most valuable company thanks to its dominance in making lithography systems, huge "chip printing" machines that cost $250 million each and are indispensable to firms driving the AI boom.

ASML is “the only game in town”, said John West of semiconductor consultancy Yole Group, referring to EUV, which uses light beams just 13.5nm thick — minuscule, given a human hair is around 80 000nm to 100 000nm across. The firm will also update its plans to ramp up the number of machines it can make.

ASML Holding (NasdaqGS:ASML) plans to cut about 1,700 jobs, roughly 4% of its workforce. The reduction comes as the company reports record net profit and strong AI driven demand for its chip making tools.

Shares in ASML and other semiconductor companies surged after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said it planned $52 billion to $56 billion in capital expenditure this year.

Nvidia is the world’s most valuable company because its chips run modern artificial intelligence. Those chips do not exist on their own. They come from a supply chain that depends on one company. That company is ASML.

ASML also plans to launch a new immersion DUV model, the NXT:1965i, in the fourth quarter of 2026. This model is designed as a less advanced version of the 1980i series that complies with U.S. export controls while meeting the needs of Chinese memory manufacturers.

In the global semiconductor industry, particularly propelled by the wave of artificial intelligence, the market capitalization of lithography leader ASML recently surpassed the $500 billion

As a whole, large-cap semiconductor stocks performed impressively in 2025. The performance of the iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ: SOXX) demonstrates this. This ETF tracks the performance of a basket of U.