February 22, 2026 -
The US and Asia depend on Europe for key chipmaking technology.
By Christopher Cytera, Cepa
It was a gala ceremony. In the Belgian university town of Leuven, the European Commission’s top tech official and the CEO of Dutch chips tool supplier ASML gathered at the modern headquarters of the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (Imec) to celebrate the inauguration of a €2.5 billion chips research hub.
The investment aims to cement the stranglehold of ASML’s chip printing machines that use extreme ultraviolet light to produce the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Imec houses research that allows ASML to build its machines — by 2030, the company aims to cram a trillion transistors into one sealed unit that snaps straight onto a circuit board.