Europe's chip machine supplier sells nothing at home as energy costs bite

Frank Heemskerk, executive vice president of public affairs at ASML, told a panel at Amsterdam's De Balie cultural centre that the company's European revenue share has fallen to zero. "We are selling absolutely nothing in Europe," he said, according to Tom's Hardware. "Because Europe is not investing and because no chip factories are being built in Europe. That is genuinely worrying."

The Dutch company is the world's only supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography systems. It is also Europe's largest company by market capitalisation, valued at around $660 billion. Its European revenue share was 5% in 2024, 1% in 2025 and 0% in the first two quarters of 2026, according to its investor presentations and earnings reports.

A demand problem, not a supply problem

Heemskerk's diagnosis is blunt. Europe has spent years subsidising supply and almost nothing on creating buyers. "There simply is no demand here for these kinds of highly specialized machines," he said. "So apart from trying to attract investment with capital on the supply side, we should do much more to create demand."

The European Union has pushed fab subsidies, including the European Chips Act, but the results are mixed. Intel runs Fab 34 near Leixlip in Ireland and announced a €5 billion expansion there. ESMC, backed by TSMC, Bosch, Infineon and NXP, is building a fab near Dresden for around €15 billion, aimed at 12nm/16nm and 22nm/28nm-class automotive chips. Intel's roughly €80 billion Magdeburg complex in Germany, however, has not lured the company as hoped.

SemiEngineering's chip industry week in review, published on 25 September, also reported that ASML is currently selling no chipmaking machines in Europe. It warned the continent risks falling further behind as the US, China and India expand domestic production.

The same roundup noted that the US Commerce Department issued a temporary rule restricting stockpiling of polysilicon and its derivatives ahead of new Section 232 import measures taking effect on 4 December. That is a second front in the same fight. Trade policy is rewriting who buys what, and from where.

Energy prices are the backdrop

Europe's industrial cost problem is not new, but the dossier's freshest signals point in one direction. Fortum, the Nordic energy company, has joined Norrsken Evolve as a limited partner, investing through its innovation and venturing arm, Tech.eu reported on 25 September. The commitment follows the final close of Norrsken Evolve's oversubscribed €62 million fund this summer. Norrsken Evolve is a pre-seed fund that has backed more than 80 companies, 75 per cent of which have raised follow-on investment.

"The future energy system will be built through faster innovation and closer collaboration between entrepreneurs, investors and industry," said Gustav Eilertsen, VP of innovation and venturing at Fortum. Johan Attby, general partner at Norrsken Evolve, framed the money as operational depth: "What Fortum brings is the operational depth that financial investors cannot: real knowledge of how energy is generated, moved and sold."

Fortum's investment sits alongside Norrsken's Electro Union campaign, an open call for the EU to commit to 50 per cent electrification of final energy consumption by 2040. That is a policy ask, not a market outcome. It lands in a continent where cheap power is the missing input.

Chip demand and energy demand are the same argument

ASML's complaint is really about who builds the factories that consume electricity at scale. Heemskerk said the company is talking to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and wants governments to aggregate and guarantee demand for European-made chips. "We need to make sure that some of those buyers, the customers of our customers, start talking much more closely with European manufacturers again," he said. In areas such as artificial intelligence for industry, he added, "there are still plenty of opportunities that Europe can seize. But you have to organize this collectively."

Tom's Hardware noted that Heemskerk may be too pessimistic. Intel's Ireland investment and the Dresden project are real, if smaller than the headline numbers once attached to Magdeburg. The counterargument is that a fab building boom without cheap electricity and without committed buyers is a subsidy programme, not an industry.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the same dynamic is being priced in. Anza, a solar and energy storage data and analytics company, expects at least a 40% spike in US solar module prices after Section 232, pv magazine reported on 26 September. The 15% tariff on polysilicon products takes effect on 4 December. Anza says the median price for imported modules was $0.27/W before the 7 August proclamation and is now $0.38/W for delivery after 4 December, among suppliers that have repriced. On quotes where Anza can compare the same SKU and contract terms, pricing has increased by about 15%.

Anza president Aaron Hall said developers are entering "the most critical procurement window" and cannot wait until 4 December to decide, because modules need time to ship and clear US customs. The Solar Energy Industries Association says the US has 75.3 GW of module manufacturing capacity, enough to supply current demand, though ingot, cell, wafer and polysilicon capacity lag behind.

What Europe is left arguing about

The European debate has drifted from whether to build clean energy to who pays for the grid and who gets the electrons. Canary Media reported on 25 September that 87% of US clean energy generation happens in rural areas, per a Rural Climate Partnership analysis, and that more than 60% of US counties with renewable restrictions are rural. That is a US story, but the politics rhyme: land, cost and who captures the value.

Meanwhile Politico reported on 24 September that European tech leaders and cybersecurity experts are pushing back hard on AI extinction warnings coming from US labs. James Wise of Balderton Capital, chair of the UK government's sovereign AI fund, said of the current narrative: "Sadly, it has jumped up to the Terminator is coming. I don't think the Terminator is coming at all." Marcus Hutchins, the researcher who stopped WannaCry, argued that the Hugging Face incident showed OpenAI failed to contain a model in a sandbox rather than an AI breaking free.

The through-line for European industry is less dramatic than either the doomers or the subsidy brochures suggest. A continent that cannot sell its own chipmaking machines to itself, that is being asked to electrify 50 per cent of final energy by 2040, and that watches trade policy raise the price of the components it needs, has an industrial policy problem that starts with the cost of a kilowatt hour.

ASML's zero is not a forecast. It is a number already printed in its earnings reports.