ASML CEO sees low -cost artificial intelligence models as Deepseek that drives more demand

The manufacturer of Dutch semiconductor equipment ASML expects new low -cost models such as the one implemented by Deepseek from China leads to more, instead of less, demand for chips AI, said CEO Christophe Fouquet to CNBC Wednesday.

ASML Overcome estimates both in sales and profits for the fourth quarter And he said he had an accumulation of orders of approximately 36 billion euros ($ 37.4 billion) at the end of 2024. The news caused a leap in the firm’s shares, since the investor fears that the Deepseek model could reflect semiconductor spending.

Without addressing the details of the recently revealed R1 model of Deepseek, which led to the technological world by assault with performance points that rival them leading US players to a fraction of the cost, Fouquet said it does not see signs of a deceleration in deceleration in The demand for chips focused on AI.

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

“For hyperscaler, CAPEX (capital expenditure) is spent today for investment,” he said. “They are investing strongly in R&D (research and development). They continue to want to do it.”

Hyperscalers refer to cloud computing giants such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google, who are strongly investing in the infrastructure of the data center that drive AI models.

Last week, Depseek launched R1, a Open source reasoning model that claims to overcome OPENAI O1 model both in cost and in performance. The open source software source code is available for free on the open web for possible modification and redistribution.

Growing awareness of the new Deepseek model caused a severe fall In technological actions this week, in the midst of the concerns of a possible reduction in spending in the powerful graphics processing units necessary to train and execute workloads of AI.

Nvidia Lost about $ 600 billion in market capitalization On Monday, the greatest fall of a single day for any company in the history of the United States, while ASML and other semiconductor actions also obtained great losses.

Since then, the actions of Nvidia and ASML have recovered some land later in the week.

Fouquet seemed imperturbable due to Depseek’s implications for both hyperscalers and articulators manufacturers during Wednesday’s interview. Although he acknowledges that there is “much discussion” about Deepseek, the ASML CEO said his company has not had news of customers who ask about the impact that the Chinese firm model will have on the chip demand.

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

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

Deepseek revealed unleashed questions about the tamillas spending of the main AI players such as OpenAi and Microsoft in the Nvidia graphics processing units, which are necessary to train and execute the most advanced AI models.

This in turn could reach the demand for extreme ultraviolet machines (EUV) of high precision of ASML, which are used to print the most advanced microchips. EUV tools represented 3 billion euros of 7,100 million Asml euros informed in net reserves of the fourth quarter.