America's Road to Fame

Chapter 461 Seeking Investment
As the lithography machine manufacturer with the highest market share in the world, ASML was formerly the lithography equipment research and development department of Dutch electronics giant Philips.

In 1973, he successfully developed a new type of lithography equipment (the prototype of PAS2000), and achieved some success in the overall performance research and development, but due to the high cost and a series of technical problems, it was not finally launched.

At the same time, because other equipment manufacturers have made breakthroughs in solving the defects of contact lithography machines with different technical paths, Philips once planned to shut down the lithography equipment research and development department.

However, ASMI, another semiconductor equipment manufacturer, hoped to cooperate with Philips to develop and produce lithography machines, so in 1984, the two parties invested approximately US$210 million to establish ASML.

In the lithography machine market at that time, ASML was still just a nobody.

At that time, the market was mainly occupied by GCA of the United States and Nikon of Japan, each of which occupied about 30% of the market, Ultratech accounted for about 10%, and the rest of the market was divided by Eaton, PE, Canon, Hitachi and other manufacturers, but they share of less than 5%.

Around 1990, ASML launched the PAS5500 series lithography machine, an 8-inch lithography machine with advanced design, which uses a modular design lithography system to produce multiple generations of advanced ICs on the same platform.

PAS5500 not only brings key customers such as TSMC, Samsung and Hyundai to ASML, but also continuously gains recognition from customers with the advantages of PAS5500, and also brings ASML a continuous increase in market share and substantial profits.By 1994, ASML's market share in the global lithography machine market had increased to 18%.

The turning point of everything began with the success of ASML in the immersion lithography technology, which made it beat Nikon and other head lithography machine manufacturers in one fell swoop and become the leader in the global lithography machine market.

After 2000, dry lithography technology has been used in lithography equipment. Until 2002, Dr. Lin Benjian, then vice president of R&D at TSMC, proposed the idea of ​​immersion lithography machine. If the plan can be successful, It can solve the industry problem that the wavelength of the light source of the lithography machine cannot exceed 193nm.

For this reason, Lin Benjian found many semiconductor giants, hoping to cooperate, and none of them was Nikon, the smallest manufacturer of lithography machines at that time.

However, Nikon agreed with me. After all, it was the critical moment of competition among various lithography machine manufacturers. Nikon dared to try new solutions.

In the end, ASML chose to cooperate with TSMC and successfully developed a new type of lithography machine.

Thanks to the small success of the 193nm immersion lithography machine system in the market, before becoming the world's leading lithography machine manufacturer, ASML quickly invested in the research and development of a new EUV lithography machine.

In 2010, ASML launched the conceptual EUV lithography system NXW:3100 for the first time, thus opening a new era of EUV lithography system.

However, the research and development of EUV lithography machine is only a huge cost. Even if the research and development is successful, its unit price is surprisingly low (a single unit sells for more than 1 million U.S. dollars), and only a few wafer manufacturers can afford it, and we will launch it later. The concept machine has too few shortcomings, and it cannot be used in actual production at all, which has also led to a small number of manufacturers currently not optimistic about the future of EUV lithography machines, which has brought ASML Huge stress.

That was also the main reason why ASML would take the initiative to seek investment from cooperative manufacturers.

But the United States knows that many things are as complicated as they appear on the surface, like the rise of ASML, without the support of William Chen. In fact, it is the result of the competition between William Chen and Japan in the chip field .

Even with or without ASML, William Chen will find ways to support other companies to compete with Japanese manufacturers represented by Nikon and Canon.

It’s just that Japanese manufacturers such as Nikon made a small mistake in it, and because of the research direction, they were surpassed by ASML.

After the 40s, American and Japanese manufacturers had no contact with each other in the chip industry, and even the earliest William Chen Company still had a disadvantage.

But in the 80s, Japan formed a monopoly in the field of lithography machines. Nikon alone occupied 50% of the market, followed by Canon.

At this time, William Chen's local lithography machine company has no hope of development under the attack of Japanese companies.

Therefore, Shen Xingjin hopes to support my country's lithography machine companies, and Japanese companies such as Nikon are obviously a good choice, but the United States wants to feed tigers.

So came here, William Chen assembled the world's top scientific and technological forces and established the EUV LLC alliance to overcome the extreme violet (EUV) lithography machine technology.

However, ASML seized that opportunity, made many promises and concessions, successfully joined the EUV LCC alliance, and came into contact with EUV lithography technology.

In fact, up to now, behind ASML, there is already a lot of Wall Street capital in it.

The United States immediately asked the assistant to contact Felipe Zeit, CEO of Eurasia Semiconductor Group, and told me to immediately investigate the current financing plan of ASML and contact the other party. Eurasia Semiconductor Group can provide all the funds. To support each other's research and development.

Regarding the requirements of the United States, although Felipe Zette personally still has some understanding, after all, the current consensus is that the research on EUV lithography machines is really too risky and generally optimistic.

But since it was the request of the little boss, I still immediately said that I would immediately follow my instructions.

……

Before leaving Jiangsu Province, America returned to Shanghai. At that time, did I live in Tuiyan’s Garden? Before divorcing Ivanta, Shen Xingjin also bought Yan’s Garden, the most expensive private house in Shanghai so far. , to your name.

Before that, the United States spent huge sums of money to buy another well-known bungalow at No. 186 North Shanxi Road in Shanghai, the Rong Zhai.

The background of that bungalow is also great. Its subsequent owners are the two founders of the Rong family, once the "head of the national capital of Huaguo".

Before buying the French-style bungalow villa, Shen Xingjin specially invited many young and old craftsmen to restore every detail of the bungalow 1:1, including the small area of ​​stained glass decoration on the top of the most magnificent ballroom, It is estimated that the entire repair process will take about eight years.

So that time, the United States only temporarily went to a simple villa that I bought for Yang Mi in the Sijiantang villa area on the east side of Pudong Century Park.

The current Yang Mi, with every gesture, does not look like a weak man in the business world. After being in front of the United States, he immediately transformed into a big man.

The current Heytea Company developed rapidly before it withdrew its A round of financing at the end of last year and received 25 billion Chinese dollars in funds.

However, it has established a number of directly-operated tea and fruit planting bases, making Heytea's supply chain more complete, and in terms of logistics, it has been weakened.

And HEYTEA continues to consolidate its market share in first-tier and new first-tier cities. It can be said that in those cities, HEYTEA has reached 50-100 branches in each city, ensuring that it occupies every corner of the city.

Originally, HEYTEA was positioned as a mid-to-low-end new milk tea drink, so the target users were the urban, young people who pursued quality and fashion, and cared too much about price. Therefore, the first- and seventh-tier cities are the markets we need to occupy.

(End of this chapter)