Zeiss & TRUMPF: The Two Companies That Could Freeze Every Chip
Two small German towns, Oberkochen and Ditzingen, hold a veto over every advanced microchip on Earth, and neither company can be bought. This is the physics and ownership structure behind the actual choke point of the AI era: not Taiwan, not ASML, but Carl Zeiss and TRUMPF.ASML is called the monopolist of EUV lithography, but ASML is a systems integrator. The mirrors that bend 13.5-nanometer light come from Zeiss, a company 100% owned by a 1889 scientific foundation with no shareholders and no stock ticker. The lasers that vaporize tin into plasma come from TRUMPF, a family trust with zero…
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