The U.K. government announced Wednesday a £20 million ($24.8 million) investment in Orbex, a Scottish spaceflight startup aiming to rival Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The investment — part of a larger funding round that’s being raised by the firm — was revealed at the European Space Conference in Brussels. 

Orbex raised £23 million for its latest fundraise. Other investors involved include Denmark’s Export & Investment Fund, Octopus Ventures and former Informatica CEO Sohaib Abbasi.

The British government also currently holds a stake in Eutelsat OneWeb, which was formed through a 2023 merger of the two firms. The government initially backed OneWeb in 2020 as part of a $1 billion rescue deal with Indian conglomerate Bharti.

Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML expects new low-cost models like the one rolled out by China’s DeepSeek to lead to more — rather than less — demand for AI chips, CEO Christophe Fouquet told CNBC Wednesday.

ASML beat estimates on both sales and profit for the fourth quarter and said it had an order backlog of roughly 36 billion euros ($37.4 billion) at the end of 2024. The news prompted a jump in the firm’s shares as investor fears that DeepSeek’s model could cool semiconductor spending ebbed.

Without addressing the specifics of DeepSeek’s newly revealed R1 model — which took the tech world by storm with performance benchmarks rivalling leading U.S. players at a fraction of the cost — Fouquet said that he sees no sign of a slowdown in demand for AI-focused chips.

“A lower cost of AI could mean more applications. More applications means more demand over time. We see that as an opportunity for more chips demand,” Fouquet said in an interview with CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal.

“For the hyperscaler, the capex [capital expenditure] is today spent for investment,” he said. “They are investing heavily in R&D [research and development]. They continue to want to do that.”

Hyperscalers refers to cloud computing giants such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google which are investing heavily in the data center infrastructure that power AI models.

Last week, DeepSeek released R1, an open-source reasoning model that claims to beat OpenAI’s o1 model on both cost and performance. Open-source software source code is made freely available on the open web for possible modification and redistribution.

Growing awareness of DeepSeek’s new model caused a severe slump in technology stocks this week, amid concerns of a possible retrenchment in spending on the powerful graphics processing units required to train and run AI workloads.

Nvidia lost close to $600 billion in market capitalization on Monday — the biggest single-day drop for any company in U.S. history — while ASML and other semiconductor stocks also notched heavy losses.

Shares of both Nvidia and ASML have since recovered some ground later in the week.

Fouquet appeared unfazed by DeepSeek’s implications for both AI hyperscalers and chipmakers during the Wednesday interview. While acknowledging there is “a lot of discussion” surrounding DeepSeek, the ASML CEO said his company hasn’t heard from customers asking about the impact the Chinese firm’s model will have on chip demand.

“For AI to really come to life in the next few years — not only with the hyperscalers, but with all of us in our phone, PC — we need AI to address two things: cost and energy consumption,” he told CNBC.

“We believe that anything that will go in the direction of lowering cost on AI is, in fact, probably news because this will allow applications to go to many, many more devices,” Fouquet added.

The DeepSeek reveal triggered questions over eyewatering spending from leading AI players such as OpenAI and Microsoft on Nvidia graphics processing units, which are needed to train and run the most advanced AI models.

This could in turn hit demand for ASML’s high-precision extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines, which are used to print the most advanced microchips. EUV tools accounted for 3 billion euros out of the 7.1 billion euros ASML reported in fourth-quarter net bookings.

Dutch semiconductor giant ASML on Wednesday reported a big jump in fourth-quarter net bookings, suggesting strong demand for its advanced chipmaking tools even as DeepSeek’s low-cost model raises concerns over AI spending.

ASML shares surged more than 11% at 8:24 a.m. London time as investor reacted to the results.

Here’s how ASML did versus LSEG consensus estimates for the fourth quarter:

• Net sales: 9.26 billion euros versus 9.07 billion euros expected.
• Net profit: 2.69 billion euros versus 2.64 billion euros expected.

ASML said that net bookings, a key indicator of order demand, came in at 7.09 billion euros.

That was up 169% from the 2.63 billion euros ASML reported in the third quarter, and exceeded the 3.99 billion euros expected by analysts polled by Visible Alpha, according to Reuters.

ASML suffered losses during a global tech sell-off earlier in the week after the rollout of Chinese startup DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model, which claims to undercut OpenAI on both cost and performance.

The move triggered questions over eyewatering spending from the likes of leading AI players OpenAI and Microsoft on Nvidia graphics processing units, which are needed to train and run the most advanced AI models.

This could hit demand for ASML’s high-precision extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines, which are used to print the most advanced microchips. EUV tools accounted for 3 billion euros of ASML’s fourth-quarter net bookings.

ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet struck a positive note on the arrival of low-cost AI models such as DeepSeek, telling CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal that he expects this development to drive more demand for semiconductors — not less.

While he declined to comment on specifics with DeepSeek’s R1, Fouquet said that he sees no sign of a slowdown in demand for AI-focused chips.

“A lower cost of AI could mean more applications. More applications means more demand over time. We see that as an opportunity for more chips demand,” Fouquet said in an interview Wednesday.

There is “a lot of discussion” in the industry surrounding DeepSeek, but Fouquet said ASML hasn’t heard from customers asking about the impact of the Chinese firm’s model on chip demand.

Ben Barringer, technology analyst at Quilter Cheviot, said that the earnings report offered “reassurance to the market following the turmoil due to concerns around DeepSeek.”

Michael Field, chief equity strategist at Morningstar, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that ASML’s fourth-quarter results vindicate the view that the chip firm isn’t “overvalued” or “full of puff.” ASML is Morningstar’s top AI pick in Europe, he added.

“Genuinely, we think the numbers support the [investment] case and, actually, we think the shares are worth more like 850 (euros) — which, given the pullback you’ve seen in the last few weeks, offers a pretty good opportunity for investors,” Field said Wednesday.

ASML shares closed at 646.60 euros per share Tuesday.