Europe controls global tech and no one knows it! #shorts
12,160Europe is the global center of technology: all the tech giants (Google, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, etc.) depend on two European companies without which the economy would be on its knees.
Electronic chips, more precisely semiconductors, are present in all our everyday connected devices. Without them, nothing would work. While 60% of these chips are produced in Taiwan by TSMC, as well as 90% of their high-end versions, their manufacturing depends entirely on ASML: the only company in the world that designs the machines needed to manufacture these high-end chips.
ASML, originally from the Netherlands, holds a monopoly on a technique called extreme ultraviolet lithography. These machines generate plasma that emits ultraviolet light. This light passes through a mask, is reflected by ultra-flat mirrors, and then etches microscopic chips onto silicon. The finer the etching, the more powerful the chip.
A single one of these machines costs over $300 million, and demand for them is exploding due to the development of artificial intelligence, which requires very powerful chips.
But this company itself depends on another company, this time German: Zeiss.
Zeiss manufactures the ultra-precise reflective mirrors found inside ASML's machines. These mirrors are among the flattest surfaces ever created by humans.
Without ASML and Zeiss (and therefore without Europe), global chip production would grind to a halt, putting entire industries on the back foot.