Relating to producing state-of-the-art microchips for synthetic intelligence, just one firm produces the multimillion-dollar {hardware} crucial to attract the advanced, microscopic designs on silicon wanted for the chips to work: ASML. Massive chipmakers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Intel, and Samsung all depend on the acute ultraviolet (EUV) lithography know-how that the Dutch firm offers. No marvel it consistently ranks among the most valuable public companies in Europe.
And overseeing ASML, and ensuring it stays on the chopping fringe of chipmaking know-how, is Christophe Fouquet, who’s been CEO of the agency since April.
Fouquet’s ascent into the highest government function comes after 15 years at ASML and over 25 within the semiconductor business—sufficient time, in different phrases, to see 10 iterations of Moore’s Law. (For the uninitiated: Moore’s Regulation states that the variety of transistors on a microchip doubles each two years with a minimal rise in value.)
Whereas Fouquet has loads of time near ASML’s pioneering lithography know-how, his expertise isn’t solely on the technical facet. He’s additionally labored in advertising and marketing and product administration, spending sufficient time sitting side-by-side with clients to grasp their wants, in a close-knit business that requires cautious coordination between chip designers like AI chip powerhouse NVIDIA, chipmakers like TSMC and Intel, essential suppliers like ASML, and the companies that in flip provide them.
“We all know one another for a lot of, a few years, and we belief one another,” Fouquet says. “I feel the phrase ‘belief’ may be very, crucial, as a result of the ecosystem is such that in case you take anybody out of the ecosystem, the entire thing stops.”
Below Fouquet, ASML can even proceed to navigate advanced geopolitical conditions, as the U.S. and its allies impose restrictions on sales of sure chipmaking gear to China amid safety considerations about AI and different applied sciences.
After all, it’s nonetheless an extremely intellectually stimulating business by way of engineering alone, Fouquet says, as befits an enviornment the place the merchandise are anticipated to double in complexity yearly and a half. And a giant a part of the business’s enthusiasm at the moment is the promise of AI, which Fouquet compares to the joy within the early days of the web and of smartphones. As he stated in a current investor presentation, AI will require further innovation to maintain computing {hardware} inexpensive and energy-efficient sufficient to harness its full potential.
And whereas semiconductor business observers have lengthy speculated concerning the finish of Moore’s Regulation, as the dimensions of chips appears to approach the very limits of physics, Fouquet stays bullish, because the business continues to seek out new strategies and approaches to make chips frequently extra highly effective.
“Generally I say, Moore’s Regulation will solely cease when individuals cease having concepts,” he says. “And I feel that has not occurred to date.”
This story is a part of AI 20, our monthlong sequence of profiles spotlighting probably the most attention-grabbing technologists, entrepreneurs, company leaders, and artistic thinkers shaping the world of synthetic intelligence.