An ASML icon is being displayed on a circuit board, alongside the flags of the USA and China, in this photo illustration taken in Brussels, Belgium, on January 4, 2024.
Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images
ASML on Tuesday offered the first glimpse into how U.S. restrictions on exports of its advanced chip manufacturing tools to China will impact its sales in the Asian country.
The Netherlands-based chip equipment maker said in its earnings report Tuesday, which was released a day early due to a “technical error,” that it expects net sales for 2025 to come in between 30 billion euros and 35 billion euros ($32.7 billion and $38.1 billion). This is at the lower half of the range ASML had guided previously.
ASML is a critical part of the global chip supply chain. The firm’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines are used by many of the world’s largest chipmakers — from Nvidia to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing — to produce advanced chips.
While third-quarter net sales at the firm reached 7.5 billion euros — beating expectations — net bookings came in at 2.6 billion euros ($2.83 billion), the company said. That was well below a 5.6 billion euro consensus estimate from LSEG.
ASML shares plunged as much as 16% on Tuesday in response, causing the firm to shed over $50 billion in market capitalization in a single day, according to CNBC calculations using LSEG data.
Beyond the disappointment on bookings — which analysts said was due to weakness in a select number of customers, including Intel and Samsung — AMSL also gave an indication of how geopolitical tensions are putting pressure on its 2025 outlook.
Roger Dassen, ASML’s chief financial officer, said Tuesday that he expects the company’s China business to show a “more normalized percentage in our order book and also in our business.”
UBS analysts said the change in ASML’s 2025 guidance was mainly related to delays with the development of new logic fabrication facilities from Intel and Samsung, adding that the new guidance implies sales to China would fall 25% to 30% in 2025.
How important is China to ASML?
ASML’s China-based customers have been stockpiling the firm’s less advanced machines to get ahead of U.S. export restrictions on the Dutch firm and to continue being able to access its critical technology, which enables them to manufacturer chips for the electronics industry.
ASML has never sold its most advanced extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV machines to Chinese customers due to previous restrictions.
Instead, chip firms in the country have opted to order ASML’s deep ultra violet lithography, or DUV machines. DUV machines are ASML’s second-tier lithography systems that are critical to make the circuitry of chips.
Last year ASML sourced 29% of its sales from China. It now expects that contribution from China to drop to around 20% of its total revenue in 2025.
Sales to China grew dramatically in the first three quarters of 2024 as customers scrambled to buy ASML’s DUV machines in bulk head of U.S. and Dutch export restrictions.
In the company’s second-quarter 2024 earnings presentation, ASML said that it sourced as much as 49% of its sales from China.
In September, the Netherlands expanded export restrictions on advanced chip manufacturing equipment by bringing licensing requirements of ASML’s machines under its purview and thereby taking over from the U.S. on controlling what machines ASML is able to export to other countries.
The move meant that the Dutch government would be able to effectively block ASML from maintaining the DUV machines it has sold to China so far.
“China is a very important market for China,” Chris Miller, assistant professor of international history at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and author of the book “Chip War,” told CNBC in emailed comments. “Most of this revenue is from older-generation chipmaking tools.”
Ironically, restrictions on exports of DUV machines to China “have probably helped ASML on net, because China has accelerated purchases of older generation DUV tools as a result,” Miller added.
Now, ASML is expecting a drop-off in sales to China as a result of U.S. trade restrictions. The firm expects China to return to taking up a smaller share of its overall global sales in 2025, CFO Dassen said in a transcript of a video interview Tuesday.
“We do see China trending towards more historically normal percentages in our business,” Dassen said. “So we expect China to come in at around 20% of our total revenue for next year. Which would also be in line with its representation in our backlog.”
Analysts at Bank of America said the firm faces a “sharp decline in China revenues.” They added that ASML’s forecast of China accounting for around 20% of its revenue in 2025, implies a 48% revenue decline year-over-year — more severe than the 3% they had anticipated.
Abishur Prakash, founder of Toronto-based advisory firm The Geopolitical Business, said that demand from China for ASML’s machines is likely to drop significantly as the firm is “severely restricted by export controls.”
“Like Intel, for whom China is the largest market, ASML is deeply reliant on China,” Prakash told CNBC via email. “For ASML, it is watching what is taking place with China as a potential restriction on business.”
“As the chip world is cut from China, ASML could see demand for its equipment drop — from China and elsewhere,” Prakash added.
Sanjay Beri, chief executive officer and founder of Netskope Inc., listens during a Bloomberg West television interview in San Francisco, California.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Cloud security platform Netskope will go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NTSK,” the company said in an initial public offering filing Friday.
The Santa Clara, California-based company said annual recurring revenue grew 33% to $707 million, while revenues jumped 31% to about $328 million in the first half of the year.
But Netskope isn’t profitable yet. The company recorded a $170 million net loss during the first half of the year. That narrowed from a $207 million loss a year ago.
Netskope joins an increasing number of technology companies adding momentum to the surge in IPO activity after high inflation and interest rates effectively killed the market.
So far this year, design software firm Figma more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut, while crypto firm Circle soared 168% in its first trading day. CoreWeave has also popped since its IPO, while trading app eToro surged 29% in its May debut.
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Netskope’s offering also coincides with a busy period for cybersecurity deals.
Founded in 2012, Netskope made a name for itself in its early years in the cloud access security broker space. The company lists Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Zscaler, Broadcom and Fortinet as its major competitors.
Netskope’s biggest backers include Accel, Lightspeed Ventures and Iconiq, which recently benefited from Figma’s stellar debut.
Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are leading the offering. Netskope listed 13 other Wall Street banks as underwriters.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta is planning to use its annual Connect conference next month to announce a deeper push into smart glasses, including the launch of the company’s first consumer-ready glasses with a display, CNBC has learned.
That’s one of the two new devices Meta is planning to unveil at the event, according to people familiar with the matter. The company will also launch its first wristband that will allow users to control the glasses with hand gestures, the people said.
Connect is a two-day conference for developers focused on virtual reality, AR and the metaverse. It was originally called Oculus Connect and obtained its current moniker after Facebook changed its parent company name to Meta in 2021.
The glasses are internally codenamed Hypernova and will include a small digital display in the right lens of the device, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.
The device is expected to cost about $800 and will be sold in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the people said. CNBC reported in October that Meta was working with Luxottica on consumer glasses with a display.
Meta declined to comment. Luxottica, which is based in France and Italy, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Meta began selling smart glasses with Luxottica in 2021 when the two companies released the first-generation Ray-Ban Stories, which allowed users to take photos or videos using simple voice commands. The partnership has since expanded, and last year included the addition of advanced AI features that made the second generation of the product an unexpected hit with early adopters.
Luxottica owns a number of glasses brands, including Ray-Ban, and licenses many others like Prada. It’s unclear what brand Luxottica will use for the glasses with AR, but a Meta job listing posted this week said the company is looking for a technical program manager for its “Wearables organization,” which “is responsible for the Ray-Ban AR glasses and other wearable hardware.”
In June, CNBC reported that Meta and Luxottica plan to release Prada-branded smart glasses. Prada glasses are known for having thick frames and arms, which could make them a suitable option for the Hypernova device, one of the people said.
Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used Connect to showcase the company’s experimental Orion AR glasses.
The Orion features AR capabilities on both lenses, capable of blending 3D digital visuals into the physical world, but the device served only as a prototype to show the public what could be possible with AR glasses. Still, Orion built some positive momentum for Meta, which since late 2020 has endured nearly $70 billion in losses from its Reality Labs unit that’s in charge of building hardware devices.
With Hypernova, Meta will finally be offering glasses with a display to consumers, but the company is setting low expectations for sales, some of the sources said. That’s because the device requires more components than its voice-only predecessors, and will be slightly heavier and thicker, the people said.
Meta and Ray-Ban have sold 2 million pairs of their second-generation glasses since 2023, Luxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said in February. In July, Luxottica said that revenue from sales of the smart glasses had more than tripled year over year.
As part of an extension agreement between Meta and Luxottica announced in September, Meta obtained a stake of about 3% in the glasses company according to Bloomberg. Meta also gets exclusive rights to Luxottica’s brands for its smart glasses technology for a number of years, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC in June.
Although Hypernova will feature a display, those visual features are expected to be limited, people familiar with the matter said. They said the color display will offer about a 20 degree field of view — meaning it will appear in a small window in a fixed position — and will be used primarily to relay simple bits of information, such as incoming text messages.
Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s technology chief, said earlier this month that there are advantages to having just one display rather than two, including a lower price.
“Monocular displays have a lot going for them,” Bosworth said in an Instagram video. “They’re affordable, they’re lighter, and you don’t have disparity correction, so they’re structurally quite a bit easier.”
‘Interact with an AI assistant’
Other details of Meta’s forthcoming glasses were disclosed in a July letter from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to a lawyer representing Meta. While the letter redacted the name of the company and the product, a person with knowledge of the matter confirmed that it was in reference to Meta’s Hypernova glasses.
“This model will enable the user to take and share photos and videos, make phone calls and video calls, send and receive messages, listen to audio playback and interact with an AI assistant in different forms and methods, including voice, display, and manual interactions,” according to the letter, dated July 23.
The letter from CBP was part of routine communication between companies and the U.S. government when determining the country of origin for a consumer product. It refers to the product as “New Smart Glasses,” and says the device will feature “a lens display function that allows the user to interface with visual content arising from the Smart Features, and components providing image data retrieval, processing, and rendering capabilities.”
CBP didn’t provide a comment for this story.
The Hypernova glasses will also come paired with a wristband that will use technology built by Meta’s CTRL Labs, said people familiar with the matter. CTRL Labs, which Meta acquired in 2019, specializes in building neural technology that could allow users to control computing devices using gestures in their arms.
The wristband is expected to be a key input component for the company’s future release of full AR glasses, so getting data now with Hypernova could improve future versions of the wristband, the people said. Instead of using camerasensors to track body movements, as with Apple’s Vision Pro headset, Meta’s wristband uses so-called sEMG sensortechnology, which reads and interprets the electrical signals from hand movements.
One of the challenges Meta has faced with the wristband involves how people choose to wear it, a person familiar with the product’s development said. If the device is too loose, it won’t be able to read the user’s electrical signals as intended, which could impact its performance, the person said. Also, the wristband has run into issues in testing related to which arm it’s worn on, how it works on men versus women and how it functions on people who wear long sleeves.
The CTRL Labs team published a paper in Nature in July about its wristband, and Meta wrote about it in a blog post. In the paper, the Meta team detailed its use of machine learning technology to make the wristband work with as many people as possible. The additional data collected by the upcoming device should improve those capabilities for future Meta smart glasses.
“We successfully prototyped an sEMG wristband with Orion, our first pair of true augmented reality (AR) glasses, but that was just the beginning,” Meta wrote in the post. “Our teams have developed advanced machine learning models that are able to transform neural signals controlling muscles at the wrist into commands that drive people’s interactions with the glasses, eliminating the need for traditional—and more cumbersome—forms of input.”
Bloomberg reported the wristband component in January.
Meta has recently started reaching out to developers to begin testing both Hypernova and the accompanying wristband, people familiar with the matter said. The company wants to court third-party developers, particularly those who specialize in generative AI, to build experimental apps that Meta can showcase to drum up excitement for the smart glasses, the people said.
In addition to Hypernova and the wristband, Meta will also announce a third-generation of its voice-only smart glasses with Luxottica at Connect, one person said.
That device was also referenced by CBP in its July letter, referring to it as “The Next Generation Smart Glasses.” The glasses will include “components that provide capacitive touch functionality, allowing users to interact with the Smart Glasses through touch gestures,” the letter said.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai gestures to the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | Afp | Getty Images
Alphabet shares rose on a Friday report that Apple is in early discussions to use Google’s Gemini AI models for an updated version of the iPhone-maker’s Siri assistant.
The company’s shares rose more than 3% on the Bloomberg report, which said Apple recently inquired of Google about the potential for the search giant to build a custom AI model that would power a new Siri that could launch next year. Google’s flagship AI models Gemini have consistently been atop key benchmarks for artificial intelligence advancements while Apple has struggled to define its own AI strategy.
The reported talks come as Google faces potential risk to its lucrative search deals with Apple. This month, a U.S. judge is expected to rule on the penalties for Google’s alleged search monopoly, in which the Department of Justice recommending eliminating exclusionary agreements with third parties. For Google, that refers to its search position on Apple’s iPhone and Samsung devices — deals that cost the company billions of dollars a year in payouts.
The Android maker has said its Gemini models will become the default assistant on Android phones. Google this year has showed Gemini doing capabilities that go beyond Siri’s capabilities, such as summarizing videos.
Craig Federighi, who oversees Apple’s operating systems, said at last year’s developer conference that the iPhone maker would like to add other AI models for specific purposes into its Apple Intelligence framework. Federighi specifically mentioned Google, whose Gemini can now hold conversations with users and handle input that comes from photos, videos, voice or text. Apple is also exploring partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI as it tried to renew its AI roadmap, according to a June Bloomberg report.
Documents revealed during Google’s remedy trial showed executives from Apple were involved in the negotiations over using Google’s Gemini for a potential search option.