ASML Holding, the Dutch chipmaking equipment giant at the center of the artificial intelligence boom, raised its 2026 revenue guidance to a 38 billion euro midpoint, signaling that demand for the tools behind advanced chips is proving stronger than it expected. The company had previously forecast 11.6% revenue growth for 2026.
Management tied the better outlook to rising capital spending by customers who are seeing healthy demand of their own, and said those customers should keep expanding production capacity in 2026 and 2027. For investors tracking asml stock, the message was simple: the AI buildout is not slowing, and the equipment needed to feed it still has room to run.
The move matters because ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines are the only systems that allow foundries, memory makers and integrated device manufacturers to print the most advanced chips used in several AI applications. That makes ASML one of the cleanest bellwethers for where the industry is putting money, and right now the answer is still into more capacity, not less.
The company also said memory supply is unlikely to meet demand in the foreseeable future, a backdrop that helps explain why Micron Technology has become one of the market’s hotter AI-linked names. Micron stock has risen 60% so far this year, analysts expect its non-GAAP earnings to jump almost sevenfold in the current fiscal year and then climb another 70% in the next one, and Gartner sees DRAM prices rising 125% this year and NAND flash prices jumping 234%.
Even after that run, Micron was trading at 22 times earnings, while analysts were still looking for another 21% upside over the next year based on a 12-month median price target of $550. Ninety-two percent of the 48 analysts covering Micron rated the stock a buy, underscoring how tightly the memory market, ASML’s outlook and the AI spending cycle have become linked. If chip customers keep spending and memory stays tight, the next phase of the AI trade may look less like a software story and more like a race for the machines and components that make the chips work.
