# ASML's earnings beat delivers the clearest rebuttal yet to AI bubble skeptics > Source: > Published: 2026-07-15 06:35:43+00:00 *ASML just posted the number the entire AI trade had been waiting on, and it beat every part of the bear case in one shot.* The company that builds the machines nobody else can build reported nine point three three billion euros in second quarter sales on Wednesday, comfortably ahead of the roughly 8.8 billion euros analysts had penciled in, with net income of 2.92 billion euros. Then it raised its full year guidance to between 43 billion and 45 billion euros, up from the 36 billion to 40 billion euro range it gave investors just three months earlier. That's a 16% jump at the midpoint. Third quarter guidance of 11 billion to 12 billion euros beat consensus too. You don't get numbers like that by accident. ## A Monopoly Nobody Can Route Around ASML is the only company on earth that makes extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, the tools that etch the tiniest circuits onto the chips powering every large language model and every Nvidia data center rack. If you want to build an advanced AI chip, your order eventually has to go through Veldhoven, the small Dutch town near Eindhoven where ASML is based. That monopoly is exactly why this print mattered so much this week. Shares had fallen roughly 11% through July, part of a broader rout that Bloomberg pegged at $1.7 trillion in wiped-out chip sector value heading into this week's results. Samsung's underwhelming preliminary second quarter numbers spooked the sector first. Then came Wednesday's other shock. IBM crashed 25%, its worst single day on record, according to CNBC, after warning its second quarter revenue would land near $17.2 billion against a $17.86 billion consensus. CEO Arvind Krishna's explanation was almost the opposite of a demand warning: clients shifted their capex "toward servers, storage, and memory purchases to secure supply-constrained infrastructure ahead of expected price increases." Software spending lost out to hardware. That's not a sign AI infrastructure demand is cooling. It's a sign buyers are racing to lock in capacity before it gets scarcer and pricier. ASML's own results read the same way. Not a coincidence sitting next to IBM's, confirmation of it. CEO Christophe Fouquet told investors that chip demand is exceeding supply. Customers are fast-tracking their capacity expansion plans, not slowing them. The installed base business, essentially the recurring revenue from servicing and upgrading machines ASML already sold, brought in 2.8 billion euros, about 300 million euros above what analysts expected. That's real. That's existing customers spending more to keep running gear they already own. It's a much harder number to fake than a fresh order book. ## Capacity, and the Cracks in the Story ASML said it will expand manufacturing capacity to keep up. The target: at least 80 low-NA EUV systems shipped in 2027, up from 44 in 2025, with at least 60 planned for this year. That capacity gets rationed among a short list of buyers - TSMC, Samsung, and Intel - who in turn supply Nvidia, AMD and the hyperscalers building out AI data centers. TSMC's own numbers, released Monday, told the same story: sales up 36%, shares at record highs. But not every customer is keeping pace. TSMC has publicly balked at the cost of ASML's newest High-NA EUV machines, delaying wider adoption because the price tag doesn't yet pencil out against its current process nodes, Bloomberg reported earlier this year. That's the real tension sitting inside this rally. ASML can sell every machine it builds, but the customers footing the bill are getting pickier about which generation of tool is actually worth it. China adds another layer of risk. The country made up roughly a fifth of ASML's planned 2026 system revenue, and the Dutch government's recent alignment with the US-led Pax Silica export control initiative has raised the odds of tighter restrictions on what ASML can still ship there. None of that stopped Wednesday's reaction. ASML shares rose 2.87% in regular trading to $1,775.64, then added another 3.51% after hours to $1,838, putting the stock back near the top of its 52-week range. The company closed 2025 with a backlog of 38.8 billion euros, close to two years of revenue already booked before a single new order this quarter. The bear case going into this week was never that AI demand was fake. It was that the price of every chip stock already assumed years of uninterrupted growth, leaving no room for a single soft quarter. ASML just delivered a quarter that wasn't soft. And it did so from the one seat in the semiconductor supply chain that nobody can route around. **Also read:** [Demis Hassabis wants a Wall Street style referee for frontier AI models](https://startupfortune.com/demis-hassabis-wants-a-wall-street-style-referee-for-frontier-ai-models/) • [Mitsubishi Bets 7.5 Billion Dollars That Gas Power Is AI's Real Bottleneck](https://startupfortune.com/mitsubishi-bets-75-billion-dollars-that-gas-power-is-ais-real-bottleneck/) • [Dave Clark Bets His Second Act on AI Agents Running Supply Chains](https://startupfortune.com/dave-clark-bets-his-second-act-on-ai-agents-running-supply-chains/)