🔹 Insight #02 – ASML > Apple (for the next 20 years)
(Deep Tech Fundamentals)
"Apple designs the future. ASML builds the machine that makes it possible."
Apple dominates headlines. Its products shape culture. But beneath the surface, there’s a company more essential to the next 20 years of innovation: ASML.
ASML doesn’t sell gadgets. It sells the single most complex machine humans have ever built — the EUV lithography system, priced at ~$150M each. With a near-monopoly on extreme ultraviolet lithography, ASML is the bottleneck of modern technology.
No chips → no iPhones. No AI. No cloud. No electric cars. Every megatrend — from semiconductors to AI to biotech — flows through ASML’s machines.
Apple is brilliant at branding and incremental design. But its ecosystem depends on suppliers. ASML is different: it’s non-substitutable infrastructure. Governments subsidize fabs. TSMC, Intel, Samsung fight for capacity. But all roads lead back to ASML’s machines in Veldhoven.
This is not a consumer play. It’s the core plumbing of the digital age. And as tech complexity compounds, ASML’s chokehold strengthens.
For the next 20 years, Apple may create trends.
But ASML enables them all.
At Altvalue, we don’t just invest in what’s visible.
We invest in what’s inevitable.