ASML becomes first European public company valued over $700B

A Dutch company that most people outside the tech industry couldn’t name a decade ago just became the most valuable public company in European history. ASML Holding has crossed the $700 billion market capitalization threshold, a milestone no European-listed firm has ever reached.

To put that number in perspective, $700 billion is roughly double the GDP of Finland. And it belongs to a company that makes exactly one thing: the machines that make chips.

The company is the sole manufacturer of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems, the machines required to produce the most advanced semiconductors on Earth.

Individual EUV systems cost up to $400 million each. A single piece of equipment, roughly the size of a double-decker bus, commands the price tag of a professional sports franchise.

TSMC, Intel, Samsung: they all need ASML’s tools to manufacture chips at process nodes below 5 nanometers. The company’s newer high-NA EUV technology pushes the boundaries even further, enabling chip designs that were physically impossible just a few years ago.

ASML’s ascent to the top of European markets has been a slow burn that accelerated dramatically in recent years. The company surpassed prior European valuation leaders including Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant behind the blockbuster weight-loss drug Ozempic, and SAP, the German enterprise software behemoth.

As of early June 2026, ASML’s market cap was estimated between $674 billion and $691 billion, placing it comfortably among the top 20 most valuable companies in the world by market capitalization.

Bitcoin mining hardware depends on cutting-edge semiconductor fabrication. The ASICs that power Bitcoin’s proof-of-work network are manufactured using the same advanced lithography processes that ASML’s machines enable. Nvidia’s most advanced AI accelerators, fabricated on TSMC’s most advanced nodes, don’t exist without ASML’s EUV tools.

ASML’s order book is essentially a leading indicator for how much the world’s biggest chipmakers plan to invest in next-generation fabrication capacity. When ASML’s orders surge, it means more advanced chips are coming, which means more powerful mining rigs, faster AI inference, and cheaper compute for decentralized applications.

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