ASML’s 2030 sales forecast is built on shaky foundations

At the Investor Day 2024, ASML maintained its 2022 sales forecast of 44-60 billion euros in 2030, despite revising the prognoses for most end-markets downwards. That’s because one application came to the rescue: AI. The new kid on the block’s demand for more computational power at lower energy expenditure and cost isn’t only keeping Moore’s Law alive, it’s actually driving an acceleration of the innovation pace, CEO Christophe Fouquet echoed other industry leaders.

“A few years ago, customers weren’t even sure whether they would need a 2nm node. They used to tell us: why do we need it? What are we going to do with 2nm? Who can afford it? What applications are going to run on that? That’s only 3 to 4 years ago,” Fouquet said. Now, “AI customers are extremely eager to get 2nm chips. And they’ll be extremely eager in the future to get A14 chips. Because that’s the only way to address cost and power consumption.”