ASML Holding NV CEO Christophe Fouquet has issued a stark warning: Europe is falling behind in the artificial intelligence race. Speaking at a technology conference, Fouquet noted that the United States now purchases 80% of the world's advanced AI chips, leaving Europe scrambling for scraps. The imbalance, he argued, threatens the continent's technological autonomy and its ability to innovate in a sector that is reshaping global economies.
The chip gap
Advanced AI chips — the specialized processors that train and run large language models and other cutting-edge AI systems — have become a strategic resource. The US dominance in procurement means American companies like Nvidia, AMD, and their cloud-computing customers have first pick of the most powerful hardware. Europe, by contrast, accounts for a sliver of global purchases. Fouquet, whose company makes the lithography machines essential for manufacturing those chips, said the gap is no longer just a business problem — it's a geopolitical one.
“Europe is quite behind,” Fouquet said, according to remarks reported by attendees. He did not provide specific figures beyond the 80% US share, but the statistic alone paints a clear picture. Without access to enough advanced chips, European AI startups and research labs risk falling further behind their US and Chinese counterparts. The result, he warned, could be a permanent loss of competitiveness in AI innovation and deployment.
The chip shortage for Europe isn't just about hardware supply. It's about the data, models, and applications that run on those chips. If European researchers can't train their own large-scale AI models because they lack the computing power, the continent becomes a consumer of AI developed elsewhere — not a producer. That dependency undercuts the EU's stated goal of “technological sovereignty,” a phrase that has become a mantra in Brussels.
Fouquet's warning lands at a time when European policymakers are drafting new regulations for AI and semiconductor production. The European Chips Act, passed in 2023, aims to double the EU's share of global chip manufacturing to 20% by 2030. But manufacturing capacity is only part of the equation. Even if Europe builds more fabs, it still needs to buy and operate the advanced chips that are currently flowing overwhelmingly to the US. The ASML CEO's comments suggest that without a strategic shift in procurement and investment, those new factories may not close the AI gap.
What needs to change
Fouquet called for both regulatory and strategic changes. On the regulatory side, he pointed to export controls, investment rules, and research funding that could be redesigned to prioritize AI chip access for European entities. On the strategic side, he urged European governments and companies to coordinate purchases and form consortiums to negotiate better access to advanced hardware, much as they have done with satellite launches and pharmaceutical research.
The CEO did not propose specific policies, but his diagnosis is clear: the current trajectory leaves Europe in a secondary role. The US and China are pouring hundreds of billions into AI compute infrastructure. Europe, he suggested, cannot afford to treat AI chips as just another commodity. They are the foundation of the next economic era, and the continent is building on sand.
Whether European leaders will heed the warning remains an open question. The European Commission is expected to release its updated AI strategy later this year. That document may include new provisions for compute access, but it will face competing priorities — from data privacy rules to energy costs to the politics of national sovereignty. For now, Fouquet's message lands with the blunt force of a CEO who sees the numbers and doesn't like where they point.
