NEW YORK / VELDHOVEN
If you want to know who is really winning the artificial intelligence race, stop looking at chatbots and start looking at factories. This week, two announcements landed within hours of each other, and together they tell one blunt story: the world cannot build computer chips fast enough, and governments and corporations are throwing staggering sums of money at the problem.
On Wednesday, 14 October 2026, Japan said it would invest up to $21 billion in two new chip factories in New York state, to be operated by GlobalFoundries and owned jointly by the US government and Japanese interests. The same day, Dutch lithography giant ASML reported record quarterly sales of €11.7 billion, and its chief executive revealed that some customers are already asking to place orders for 2029 and even 2030.
Read that last bit again. Customers want to reserve machines four years from now.
Japan Writes a Very Big Cheque
The New York deal is part of Japan's broader $550 billion commitment to invest in the United States, a pledge linked to lower US tariffs on Japanese imports. The headline figure for the chip project is up to $21 billion across two fabs. GlobalFoundries, which is headquartered in Malta, New York, will build and run them.
The financial structure is unusual. According to reporting on the deal, Japan will provide all of the investment capital. The factories will be jointly owned by the US government and Japanese interests, and free cash flow will be split evenly between the two countries until a set allocation is reached, after which 90 percent goes to the United States. Separately, the US government will acquire a 4 percent stake in GlobalFoundries itself, raising its total ownership of the company to about 7 percent.
GlobalFoundries is not putting up the money, but it still stands to profit. It will earn fees from building and operating the plants, and from licensing its chip-manufacturing technology. CEO Tim Breen said the company will manage customer relationships. Early customers are expected to include Renesas Electronics, the Japanese chipmaker, and Apple.
Investors liked what they heard. GlobalFoundries shares rose nearly 5 percent in premarket trading on the news, and were already up more than 33 percent for the year as of the prior close.
Priority for Friends
The most revealing comment came from Breen himself, who made clear who gets served first when supply is tight. "We definitely would like to give priority to U.S. and Japanese customers," he said.
That single sentence captures the new logic of the semiconductor business. For decades, chips were a global commodity bought from whoever made them cheapest. Now they are treated as strategic infrastructure, closer to oil or power grids than to ordinary manufactured goods. Governments want capacity on their own territory, or on the territory of close allies, and they are willing to take ownership stakes to get it.
The deal may ripple through the supplier chain, too. Some of the Japanese investment may flow to toolmakers such as Tokyo Electron, which supplies equipment used to make chips. Details on construction timelines and job numbers were not included in the reports we reviewed, so it is too early to say when the first wafers will roll off the line.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands: A Record-Breaking Quarter
The deal would be big news on any normal day. But on the same day, ASML, the Dutch company that builds the lithography machines without which no advanced chip can be made, reported third-quarter results that read like a victory lap.
The numbers, from the company's own filing: total net sales of €11.7 billion, which CEO Christophe Fouquet described as a record and toward the high end of company guidance. Net income of €5.0 billion. Gross margin of 57.5 percent, up from 54.0 percent in the previous quarter. Basic earnings per share of €12.95. Sales from the company's installed base, meaning upgrades and servicing of machines already out in the world, reached €3.3 billion. In the quarter, ASML sold 113 new lithography systems and 8 used ones.
The company also said its order book momentum rose from the previous quarter, though it did not publish a specific bookings figure.
The Guidance Is the Real Shock
If the quarter was strong, what comes next is stronger. ASML guided for fourth-quarter net sales of €14.2 billion to €15.2 billion, with gross margin around 57 percent. For the full year 2026 it expects net sales between €44 billion and €45 billion, with gross margin around 56 percent.
Perhaps more striking is what the company said about the future. It gave no formal 2027 guidance, but its release states that planned supply for 2027 and 2028 will not fully meet customer demand. To respond, ASML is planning a 30 percent increase in its low-NA EUV and DUV immersion capacity for 2027, and is investigating a further 30 percent increase for 2028.
And then came Fouquet's remark about the long queue. Some customers, he said, are "expressing an interest in placing orders with us for 2029 and even 2030."
Why One Company Matters So Much
For readers who have never heard of ASML, here is the short version. Making a modern processor means printing billions of microscopic transistors onto silicon, using light. ASML builds the extreme ultraviolet machines that make the most advanced patterns possible, and it is widely regarded as the only company that can do so at commercial scale. If ASML cannot ship machines, the chip factories cannot expand, and everything from data centers to smartphones feels it.
That is why the company's order book works as a kind of early-warning system for the entire technology sector. Chipmakers only order such expensive machines when they are confident that demand for their products will be there years later. A queue stretching to 2029 and 2030 says those customers believe the demand is durable, not a passing frenzy.
Two Stories, One Theme
Put the two announcements side by side and the connections are obvious. The New York fabs will need lithography tools, and ASML's tools are in short supply. The AI boom has driven huge demand for advanced processors, and that demand flows down through chip designers, factories and, finally, the machine-makers at the very start of the chain.
It also shows how the geography of chipmaking is being redrawn. Japan, a long-time leader in materials and equipment, is putting its money into American soil. The United States, which once watched much of its manufacturing move overseas, is taking equity stakes in the plants and in the company running them. The Netherlands sits at the choke point, holding the one technology everyone else needs.
Expert Perspective
Industry watchers are reading the ASML numbers as proof that the supply side is the constraint, not the demand side. In the company's own words, planned supply for the next two years will not fully meet what customers want. When a firm raises capacity by 30 percent and still expects to fall short, the message is clear: the shortage is structural.
On the GlobalFoundries side, Breen's priority comment signals how the industry is being reorganized around national and allied interests. Analysts have long described semiconductor supply chains as a geopolitical lever, and the structure of the New York deal, with government equity, shared cash flows and a customer-priority pledge, makes that view concrete.
It is worth adding a note of caution. The reported details of the deal come from news coverage of the announcement, and construction timelines, job numbers and the identity of every customer remain to be filled in. Big headline figures such as up to $21 billion are ceilings, not guarantees, and large factories have a history of running late and over budget.
What This Means for You
You may never buy a lithography machine, but you will feel this story in your pocket and your power bill.
Start with gadgets. The chips in future phones, laptops and cars depend on exactly this supply chain. If capacity is tight, prices stay firm and launches of new hardware can slip. If the new factories and expanded ASML output arrive on schedule, supply eases, though not quickly: 2027 and 2028 are already described as constrained.
Then there is AI. Every new chatbot feature, image generator and automated assistant runs on advanced processors. The cost and availability of those chips influence what services get built and how much you pay for them. A shortage at the foundation of the stack tends to show up in subscription prices and waiting lists higher up.
Finally, there is the economy. The US government taking stakes in chip companies, and an ally financing American factories, point to a world where technology policy and trade policy are the same thing. Tariff deals now come with factories attached. That shapes jobs, investment and the markets where many people hold their savings.
What to Watch Next
Three things deserve attention. First, the fine print of the New York project: timelines, technologies and which customers get served in what order. Second, whether ASML's fourth-quarter numbers land inside the guided range of €14.2 billion to €15.2 billion, and what the company says about 2027. Third, whether other governments copy the model, trading market access for ownership of chip capacity.
The bigger question is whether any of this can be built fast enough. Factories take years. Lithography machines take years. Skilled workers take years. Demand, as ASML's customers are signalling, may not wait.
Conclusion
On a single Wednesday, the chip world delivered a vivid snapshot of the era we are living in. A record quarter at the company that makes the key machines. A new alliance of money and manufacturing between Tokyo and Washington. A customer base asking to book capacity half a decade out.
The AI revolution is often described in terms of software, but it rests on something far more physical: silicon, light, steel and enormous quantities of cash. The race to build that foundation is accelerating, and this week it got a lot more expensive, and a lot more political. If you want to see where technology is heading, follow the factories.
