The company that builds the optics for every ASML EUV machine says Beijing is at least a decade and a half from matching it. Frank Rohmund, who heads the semiconductor manufacturing technology unit at Zeiss, told Bloomberg TV that 15 years is a reasonable estimate for China to develop extreme ultraviolet lithography of its own.
Rohmund cautioned that nobody yet knows how effective China’s first homegrown tools will be. Chinese suppliers are starting with immersion DUV systems, the generation before EUV, and he said their real capability still has to be demonstrated.
Zeiss’ view lines up with fresh work from Swiss bank UBS, which dated China’s EUV progress to roughly where ASML stood in 2004. The gap carries real weight because EUV is required for the most advanced AI chips, and US export controls have cut China off from buying those machines, leaving domestic efforts as the only road forward.
