Christophe Fouquet, CEO of ASML, the Netherlands-based leader in the global semiconductor equipment market, said the chip supply shortage sparked by the AI boom will be hard to resolve for some time.
According to a report on the 20th by Reuters, Fouquet attended a semiconductor technology conference held the previous day in Antwerp, Belgium, and said, "AI demand is increasing at a pace that surpasses expectations, so supply falling short of demand will continue for quite a while."
He warned that bottlenecks will recur sporadically across the supply chain. With major global semiconductor corporations such as TSMC, Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, Micron and Intel relying on ASML equipment, he said big tech corporations are racing to ramp up data center investments by hundreds of billions of dollars, and production infrastructure expansion is failing to keep up with the pace of demand growth.
Fouquet said Elon Musk's large-scale AI Semiconductor manufacturing facility "Terafab" and the Starlink satellite project were cited as factors that will further spur future chip demand. He called "Starlink the most notable project," adding, "Everything—AI devices, robots and Autonomous Driving cars—ultimately has to be connected to data networks, and that will drive massive semiconductor demand." He also said he met Musk in person.
Meanwhile, ASML is actively pursuing improvements in production efficiency and increased equipment shipments, and plans to unveil this year production performance data for logic and memory chips using its next-generation "High NA EUV" equipment. The industry expects the semiconductor market to reach $1.5 trillion (about 2,175 trillion won) by 2030.
On the issue of tighter export controls to China, he warned, "If the reins of regulation are pulled tighter, China will instead step up its own technology development," adding, "An entity isolated where there is no feed will eventually find a way to survive on its own."