CompetitorsWide moat

ASML is the rarest thing in this collection: a company with essentially no competitors. It holds 100% of extreme ultraviolet lithography and roughly 94% of lithography overall¹. Nikon and Canon, its only nominal rivals, withdrew from advanced lithography development years ago and now build legacy systems for mature nodes.

So these pages ask a different question: if nobody competes with ASML, what actually constrains it? Four answers. Nikon and Canon still matter at the trailing edge, where ASML's monopoly does not apply. China's national programme is building a domestic alternative — SMEE and its successors are estimated to be more than a decade behind on EUV and about four generations behind on DUV², which is far away and not infinitely far. ASML's own customers are the only parties with the capital and motive to fund an alternative, and they are also the only parties who could refuse to buy. And the real constraint on ASML has never been a competitor at all — it is physics, and the governments that decide who may buy the machines.

The distinction matters for how the moat is judged. A company protected by competitive advantage can lose it to a better rival. A company protected by twenty years of accumulated know-how, an exclusive Zeiss optical supply chain and a machine nobody else can build loses its position only to policy or to its own customers' spending decisions.

Watch China's share of ASML revenue, which export restrictions have already cut toward about 20% in 2026. That number measures the one force that has genuinely taken business away from ASML — and it is not a competitor.