One signal

ASML's EUV dominance carries a price tag, and Canon is betting some chipmakers would rather not pay it. Per a Thursday 24/7 Wall St. analysis, Canon's FPA-1200NZ2C nanoimprint tool stamps circuit patterns with a mask, skipping EUV's physics and cost, while Nikon keeps to i-line and ArF scanners for mature nodes.

Why it matters

Nobody is picking a fight at 2nm. The target is the layers below, where cost per wafer beats resolution, and Kioxia has publicly adopted Canon's approach for select memory work, per the column. ASML's own pricing power prises the door open: chief executive Christophe Fouquet describes customers 'aggressively' adding capacity in a market where a High NA tool can run to $400m. The column's test is the fair one: if a second memory maker qualifies nanoimprint for production layers in 2027, the lithography story stops being a one-company monopoly. A moat is also a price umbrella. Would that adoption change how you price AI chip capacity, or is EUV's lead simply out of reach?

Discuss: Would a second memory maker qualifying Canon's nanoimprint for production layers in 2027 genuinely loosen the EUV story, or is ASML's lead simply out of reach?

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