European semiconductors & chip industry

If there is one industry where European sovereignty is not in dispute, it is semiconductor equipment and certain specialty chip categories. ASML in the Netherlands is the only company in the world that makes the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines required to produce leading-edge chips — every modern processor from Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Intel and TSMC traces back to an ASML machine in Veldhoven. Around ASML sit Infineon (power and automotive), STMicroelectronics (mixed-signal and microcontrollers), NXP (automotive and IoT), Soitec (specialty wafers), AMS-Osram (sensors and optical) — plus the Belgian research institute Imec that almost every chip company in the world uses to develop next-generation process nodes.

The chip-design and mass-fabrication end of the value chain has largely migrated to Asia and the US. But the equipment, the specialty wafers, the automotive-grade chips and the R&D foundations remain heavily European, and that's what this list captures.

Below: ten European semiconductor and chip-industry companies that genuinely matter to global chip supply.