ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet Talks AI Demand, Future of Chips

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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Let's get to Paris, back to France, where opening trade co-host Tom Mackenzie is standing by with the CEO of ASML at the Viva Tech Conference. Tom, take it away.

**Tom Mackenzie** (0:19)
Matt, yes, the CEO of Europe's most valuable company, ASML, that plays that central role, of course, in the semiconductor space, Christophe Fouquet. Christophe, we are meeting and talking at a moment where there is a lot of focus here in Europe on the decision by the US to impose export controls on anthropic models. And Europe is feeling the impact of that. And it's a reminder of the questions around sovereignty, particularly around AI. And you are pushing hard on this. What is your message to Brussels? What is it that Europe needs to do to ensure that it is not vulnerable to those kind of supply chain risks?

**Christophe Fouquet** (0:51)
Well, I think indeed there's a lot of discussion around that. And sovereignty has become a key word because people realize strategically if you don't have a big enough part of a certain ecosystem, in this case AI, you're going to be exposed to the goodwill of other parties. But I think what's very important to understand when it comes to sovereignty is to get sovereignty, you need innovation first. You have to do things in the right order.
It's not enough to say, I want sovereignty. What's very important is make sure that innovation can happen in Europe. And I think that's a bit the idea of the tech creators group we have created, where we believe that it is very, very important to have a dialogue with a different government, commission but also national government, to help them to understand how to create the condition such that the AI ecosystem can develop in Europe.
You will never have the entire ecosystem, right? You cannot do it whole. It's too much. Or you cannot do it whole at the same time. But you need at least to have enough, I would say, skin in a game, enough value in ecosystem so that when those discussion or those decision happen, you have a voice.

**Tom Mackenzie** (2:08)
So where can Europe have skin in the game? They got skin in the game with ASML and the role that you play.

**Christophe Fouquet** (2:13)
Yeah.

**Tom Mackenzie** (2:13)
Where else can Europe have skin in the game when it comes to AI?

**Christophe Fouquet** (2:16)
Well, I think a very important place is the market itself. The European market is pretty attractive, right? If you look at 22% of JDP, it's a very, I would say, mature market, very good market. So this means we are user, we are buying a lot of stuff. And that's to start with, a strength for Europe. And I think that's the reason why Europe was created.
Now, if you look at the other part between maybe ASML and that, we have a lot of holes. And sometime we discuss a lot semiconductor manufacturing. Yes, there is a gap there, but most probably not the right place to start, because semiconductor manufacturing is only needed if you have people to buy a semiconductor. Today, if we had a two nanometer fab in Europe, most probably most of the wafers will go to the US.
So since we have a strong market, we have to start by looking at that and focus on what we call the market demand product, and have strong industrial projects around AI application, around maybe AI product, then maybe chip design, and then chip manufacturing. But you have to look at the entire sequence and look at it in the right order.

**Tom Mackenzie** (3:35)
How would you score Europe right now on a score of 1 to 10 in this AI race?

**Christophe Fouquet** (3:41)
Well, I think I've said that before. I think that if we compare how we do on the entire ecosystem versus the US and China, I think today the US is a clear winner. They are looking at champion across the entire AI semi-ecosystem. I think the one place they were missing a bit out was manufacturing, and I think they have been extremely aggressive in bringing some key company to manufacture in the US. They can do that because they buy chips. Eighty percent of the advanced chips manufacturer worldwide is bought by the United States. So I think the US is doing very, very well. China has been investing also across the entire ecosystem. I think most probably they do very well on the application side.
A bit less on what's before that, but I think they are driving the use of AI most probably more aggressively than any other country.