TSMC boss skips his own event, flies to Netherlands to meet with ASML boss about EUV machines

TSMC has been slow to adopt ASML's latest High-NA EUV lithography machines, but it seems that has changed in the last few days with TSMC CEO C.C. Wei skipping his own event, to fly to the Netherlands to meet with ASML to discuss securing equipment.

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In a new report from Business Korea, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei skipped the TSMC Technology Symposium 2024 held in Taipei, Taiwan, to visit ASML's headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands, and TRUMPF, an industrial laser specialist company located in Ditzingen, Germany.

TSMC didn't make the media aware of where its CEO was, who was on a secret trip, but the secret was revealed through ASML CEO Christopher Fuke, and TRUMPF CEO Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller, and their respective social media accounts.

Fuke said: "We introduced our latest technologies and new products to CEO Wei, including how the High Numerical Aperture (High NA) EUV equipment will implement future semiconductor microprocessing technologies".

• Read more: TSMC might not use ASML's latest High-NA EUV machines for its future-gen A16 process in 2026
• Read more: TSMC doesn't need ASML's new High-NA EUV lithography machines for its next-gen A16 process
• Read more: Intel places orders to secure ALL of ASML's High-NA EUV machines built this year

Local media and industry sources in Taiwan said: "It appears that TSMC's management made a decisive visit to ASML to secure global semiconductor dominance. With the increasing importance of lithography equipment in sub-7-nm ultrafine processes, TSMC seems to have joined the competition".

Now, the thing is... until now it's been rumored that TSMC wouldn't be using ASML's new High-NA EUV lithography machines for its future-gen A16 process rolling out in 2026. Intel has been spending billions and billions of dollars ordering every single High-NA EUV lithography machine that ASML makes for the rest of 2023... and now it seems TSMC is scrambling.

It's not just TSMC, either... with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-young meeting with ASML CEO Fuke and Carl Zeiss CEO Karl Lamprecht, a key partner of TSMC, at Zeiss's headquarters in Oberkochen, Germany, to strengthen the "triangular semiconductor alliance". EUV is here, not just in the 2nm process node, but the latest advanced memory (DRAM) that is coming... Samsung wants in on all of it.

The CEO of TSMC skipping his own event, to meet with ASML is a pretty big deal... especially as we're days away from Computex 2024 which kicks off in Taipei, Taiwan -- the home of TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) -- where AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and every other company in the industry will show off (and release) their next-generation products.