ASML’s Productivity Leap Reinforces Analyst Faith as Huawei Plots an EUV-Free Path

ASML raises EUV wafer throughput to 230 per hour with 57% lower energy use, while Huawei's LogicFolding aims for 1.4nm chips without EUV by 2031. ASML stock hits 52-week high on AI demand.

The Dutch lithography giant ASML is pushing its flagship machines to new efficiency records while fending off a conceptual challenge from China’s Huawei that aims to sidestep its core technology altogether. On Tuesday, the company revealed that its TWINSCAN NXE:3800E extreme ultraviolet (EUV) system can now process 230 wafers per hour, up from 220, as part of a broader drive to boost wafer output by 50% by 2030. Energy consumption per exposure has fallen 57% since 2018, a point Taiwan general director Grace Wang emphasized as a way for customers to cut both power bills and cycle times.

Yet even as ASML tightens its technological grip, Huawei has laid out an alternative vision. At a semiconductor conference in Shanghai, the Chinese firm unveiled its “LogicFolding” architecture and a companion “Tau Scaling Law,” aiming to reach 1.4-nanometer-level chips by 2031 — without using a single EUV machine. The move is driven by US export controls that block ASML’s most advanced gear from reaching China. Instead of shrinking transistors further, Huawei is betting on what it calls “time scaling”: boosting performance through faster data transfer, shorter interconnects and lower latency on the chip itself.

He Hui, semiconductor research director at Omdia, described the shift as “a move from traditional node-driven scaling to system-wide efficiency optimization,” calling it “a credible way to extract more performance when leading-edge lithography is unavailable.” Skeptics remain. Neil Shah of Counterpoint Research warned the approach is “unproven at scale” and could trigger thermal challenges and packaging complexity that depress yields. Huawei chip chief He Tingbo offered no concrete details on how production would work without EUV. Still, the company claims it has already developed and mass-produced 381 chips using related techniques over the past six years. Commercial Kirin processors based on the new architecture are slated for the Mate 90 smartphone series in 2026, with Ascend AI chips expected to follow by 2030 — eventually targeting large data center clusters. By comparison, TSMC plans to begin mass production of 1.4nm chips as early as 2028, three years ahead of Huawei’s timetable.

On Wall Street, the news has barely dented confidence in ASML. The stock is trading at a 52-week high, up roughly 44% year-to-date, and Bernstein analyst Qingyuan Lin reiterated his buy rating with an unchanged price target of €1,700. Lin pointed to sustained AI demand as the key driver for ASML’s advanced lithography tools. The company’s Taiwan operations alone contribute around €8.3 billion annually — about 25.5% of global revenue — underlining the region’s strategic weight. For 2026, ASML forecasts net sales between €36 billion and €40 billion with a gross margin of 51% to 53%, a range that management says already incorporates potential fallout from ongoing export-control negotiations. In the second quarter, it expects revenue of €8.4 billion to €9.0 billion.

The next growth catalyst is high-NA EUV technology, which ASML expects to deliver its first logic and memory chips fabricated with the systems in the coming months. That would open up new customers, especially AI data center operators and hyperscalers demanding the most powerful chips. Whether Huawei’s LogicFolding remains a technical curiosity or eventually saps EUV demand will be tested when the first Kirin chips hit the market — and when the company tries to push into AI data centers. For now, ASML’s combination of incremental productivity gains and robust analyst support keeps it firmly in the driver’s seat.