ASML Holding NV CEO Christophe Fouquet says the demand for AI infrastructure is still "enormous" and discusses the potential for data centers in space. Speaking during an interview on Bloomberg Television, Fouquet also says the company has to make sure it doesn’t experience supply constraints when servicing new projects such as on Elon Musk’s Terafab.
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What Christophe Fouquet said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Christophe Fouquet, ASML's CEO, argued that Europe's path to AI sovereignty must start with innovation, not protectionism, and that the region should leverage its strong market (22% of GDP) before pursuing chip manufacturing. He scored Europe as 'quite behind' the US and China, noting the US buys 80% of advanced chips and has been aggressive in attracting manufacturing. Fouquet said AI infrastructure demand remains enormous and the market will be supply-limited for years, with the industry only recently committing to capacity. He dismissed data centers in space as an energy solution rather than a capacity driver, and called Musk's Terafab a potential upside if ASML is not supply-limited. On China, he denied rumors of DUV shipments, insisting ASML follows all rules. He highlighted a partnership with Tata in India, where the first fab comes next year and India could use 10% of chips by 2030.
Key takeaways
Europe must prioritize innovation and market strength before chip manufacturing to achieve AI sovereignty.
The US buys 80% of advanced chips worldwide, making it the clear AI winner.
ASML has partnered with Tata in India, with the first fab expected next year.
Fouquet denied rumors of DUV shipments to China, reaffirming full compliance with all rules.
4:50Are we underestimating the CapEx spend that could come about as a result of that capital raising, and what it means for the demand for your lithography machines?
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?
Well, I think indeed there is a lot of discussion around that. And sovereignty has become a key word because people realize that 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 that'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 the different government commission, but also national governments, 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, but you cannot do it all. It's too much or you cannot do it all at the same time, but you need at least to have enough skin in the game in the ecosystem so that when those discussions or those decisions happen, you have a seat at the table.
Where can Europe have skin in the game? They've got skin in the game where they have skills and the role that you play. Where else can you have skin in the game when it comes to AI?
Well, I think a very important place is the market itself. The European market is pretty attractive, right? You look at 22% of GDP. It's a very, I would say, mature market, very good market. So this means we are users. We are buying a lot of stuff. And that's to start with a strength for Europe. And I think that's a reason why Europe was created. Now if you look at the other part, we have a lot of talk 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 products and have strong industrial projects around AI applications, around maybe AI products, 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.
Well, I think I've said that before. I think that, you know, if we compare all we do on the entire ecosystem versus the U.S. and China, I think today the US is a clear winner. I mean, they have champions across the entire AI semiconductor 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. 80% of the advanced chips manufactured 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 really 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. And again, when you look at Europe, a lot of talk. So I would say, you know, Europe is really quite behind what's happening elsewhere today.
So that gap is obviously there. How interventionist should European governments be? The US taking a 10% stake in Intel. Is that a playbook that we should copy?
Well, I think two things maybe. So first, we need to have a dialogue between the industry and government. Government is to really develop instruments, regulation or lack of regulation in some cases to make the industry champions' life a lot easier.
I want to ask you about the IPOs that come through SpaceX, notably, and possibly OpenAI and Anthropic coming up into the future. Are we underestimating the CapEx spend that could come about as a result of that capital raising, and what it means for the demand for your lithography machines?
Well, if you look at, you know, worldwide, the demand for AI infrastructure is still enormous. And the demand for AGI-age computers start to come up. So the demand is continuing to go up. I think a lot of us are convinced that we're going to be looking at a supply limited market for AI, for semiconductor for quite a few years, because the build up of the infrastructure is huge. And I think some of the IPO you mentioned are just pointing to the opportunity that the AI is represented.
10 more exchanges in this transcript
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Fouquet, C. (2026, June 17). ASML CEO on AI Demand, Data Centers in Space and Musk's Terafab [Interview transcript]. Bloomberg Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/995564/
MLA
Christophe Fouquet. "ASML CEO on AI Demand, Data Centers in Space and Musk's Terafab." Bloomberg Television, 17 Jun. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/995564/.
BibTeX
@misc{fouquet2026_995564,
author = {Christophe Fouquet},
title = {ASML CEO on AI Demand, Data Centers in Space and Musk's Terafab},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Bloomberg Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jun},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/995564/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
