Europe at last has an answer to Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

Europe at last has an answer to Silicon Valley

economist.com

73 pointssohkamyung76 comments

ASML has awesome tech, and the European engineering deep tech supply chain has always been great. Look at the deep supply chains for automotive.

However, the comparison with Silicon Valley is superficial. Silicon Valley is an absolute powerhouse across the technology spectrum but particularly on the software side, and has repeatedly for decades churn out innovative companies. While the article calls ASML “digital”, based on my experience working with ASML, their unique strengths is system integration, not software.

And while there is plenty of scientific talent in Europe, which for semiconductor is somewhat clustered around Eindhoven thanks to ASML, the talent and capital density + culture of Silicon Valley is still unrivaled.

> clustered around Eindhoven

Also Leuven, althouth IMEC is a research facility unlike ASML.

> clustered around Eindhoven thanks to ASML

No, clustered around Eindhoven due to the former Philips Natlab [1,2] (Natuurkundig Laboratorium or 'Physics Laboratory') which served as an incubator for many new technologies. The company which is now ASML got its start there as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips_Natuurkundig_Laborator...

[2] https://innovationorigins.com/en/laio/philips-natlab-closes-...

So ASML has more or less a monopoly in the "chipmaking tools" (to quote the article) market. Good for them! But I fail to see how one successful European company (which has been successful for decades BTW) is an "answer to Silicon Valley"?!

The article covers this. Basically, ASML is better understood as a network of companies working together to create these tools with (if I recall) somewhere around 100k total employees. So the article isn't talking about one single company.

Now, I probably wouldn't call a network of companies for a fairly specific set of tasks an "answer to Silicon Valley", but that is the thrust of the article. I think it is more of a rejoinder against the argument that Europe cannot "do tech".

Good to see that in one ultra-high technological niche, Europe is the leader.

Credit where it's due to our cultural cousins across the pond, they have had the lead in advanced technology and microelectronics for decades even though we're on the same page culturally and economically. The sad reality is that human ingenuity and entrepreneurship can get sabotaged pretty easily when incompetent and short-sighted bureaucrats are running the show.

For example, and tangentially related, I was surprised to learn this morning that Airbus has one (and soon two) assembly sites in Mobile, AL — for a European it is surprising to know we have a high-tech company so successful it can afford a foothold or two in the US, when the opposite is incredibly commonplace.

> for a European it is surprising to know we have a high-tech company so successful it can afford a foothold or two in the US

It's not unusual at all, almost every major European manufacturer has US facilities (often to get around import tariffs). It's common for software companies to do the same.

Unless workers can become fabulously rich because a company they joined becomes multi-billion dollars, it will never be an answer to Silicon Valley. The ability to become fabulously wealthy is the reason why Silicon Valley is currently unmatched anywhere in the world.

Silicon Valley existed and thrived for decades before the boom era; you are describing a consequence and not the cause of its success.

False. People were getting rich in Silicon Valley for decades. I'm not sure which "boom era" you're talking about but it's been attracting talent and money since the 80s.

Yes indeed it has; but you said "fabulously rich", which is a more recent phenomenon.

Fabulously, not as many. HP, Intel, Sun, SGI, Microsoft, Cisco, ... I mean all of these did leave people fabulously rich. So I'm not sure what you're talking about unless you mean the ZIRP IPOs of scam companies we've seen in the last fifteen years.

If anything, from 1970 to late 1997 you did have a few differences - the fraction of scams dumped at inflated valuations on the public markets was a lot lower, and the number of huge company exits was lower - but that's actually more about how the industry was healthier (less bullshit) and smaller (it hadn't grown yet).

"Fabulously rich" is relative to your own biases. To be able to retire early in your 30's or 40's due to some luck in the startup lottery, even if its "just" a few million dollars, is "fabulously rich" by European standards.

That is "fabulously rich" by my standards too. My point is that the existence of the "startup lottery" is relatively recent in Silicon Valley history, and therefore cannot explain why Silicon Valley has the advantage it does.

It's been a thing since at least the 70's, maybe the 60's (I know less about that era), at least if you adjust for cost of living and inflation.

In other words, longer than Silicon Valley has actually been a thing (it used to be Santa Clara Valley!)

My dad did the startup thing in the 80's, and still has his old stock certificates representing a non-trivial ownership share. It didn't work out for him, but I tried 3 decades later with some measure of success. So this is at least two literal generations of Silicon Valley economic mobility here.

You're completely wrong and I don't think you live in Silicon Valley. If you do, you must have only been here for a short period of time. I've been in Silicon Valley for 30+ years and the first company I worked for, the admin assistant got so rich from her IPO shares that she quit and bought a winery in Napa. Please don't comment on things you don't know about.

Have a nice day.

70s.

Really the original “silicon” boom was in the 60s with fairchild et al. 60+ years of this

I didn't live here during the 60s or 70s so I didn't want to talk about that time period, but I know for a fact a ton of people got very rich during the 80s and afterwards.

Workers in the valley have been making real money in the startup lottery (not fabulous wealth but real money in the retire-by-50 sense) since Intel and HP were formed in the very early 1970s; let alone Microsoft, Sun, SGI and others in the early 80s. By the mid-80s it wasn't rare at all (Cisco, for one of many).

Yeah that will never happen in Europe. It’s too top down and the workers are rarely given significant shares.

And, depending on the country, shares are taxed the same as bonuses with very steep tax rates (50-60+%).

Didn't the US basically tech-transfer most of ASML's tech to it for some reason?

The US Govt. gave EUV tech to Silicon Valley Group and a couple others to commercialize. They excluded ASML and a couple Japanese companies. ASML eventually bought SVG and after a couple decades of research and investments they have EUV machines.

I think it was more proto-tech than fully formed tech that the US Gov developed.

100% this. People often misunderstand what technology at the governmental and university level means. The root of EUV lithography goes back 3 decades. It did originate in the US and was done at US government sponsored labs but it took 3 more decades to go from fundamental research to commercial application. Even now the yield rate isn't that great. There's still a lot of R&D to be done on EUV.

I am very glad that ASML eventually got access to information related to EUV, despite being initially excluded. Where would the world be without them and their long term investment into EUV?

This misunderstanding lead to unnecessary and destructive policies and laws that prevents scientific cooperation between countries across many different fields.

Cymer was not "proto-tech."

Isn't that DUV not EUV?

No.

Did they have a working EUV lithography process and machinery? These days it says on their website they supply DUV light sources.

Yes, I should’ve emphasized decades of R&D to get anything commercially usable and I’m drastically understating what it took.

https://archive.is/jGktN

Beware that at the moment the European job market is not looking good for generalists. We are nowhere close to a SC or Texas kind of hub.

What should one specialize in for the EU job market?

C for German Industrial and automotive sector, Java CRUD for banks, BS consultancy and body shops, and Python stuff for hip Berlin start-ups that will 99% fail for 0,1% equity and no housing.

Pretty different than Silicon Valley.

>BS consultancy and body shops

I've never heard of "BS". What language is this?

Isn't Python the lingua franca of AI/ML? I would tend to agree with the cynicism regarding failure rate and expensive housing take, however. Despite the hype I still think AI/ML does have more potential practical use cases than crypto/block chain did.

I'm not sure if you're being tongue and cheek here, however in the case you aren't

What the OP is saying is that Java is good for CRUD, consultancies and body shops (which are a way of saying poor engineering consultancy firms, often Accenture is considered one, for an example) and Python for German startups that often fail and don't provide the same type of benefits / pay like SV startups do, at least sometimes.

BS in this case isn't a language, it stands for bullsh*t.

Thanks for taking the time to clear it up for me. I read it as Java for CRUD, but not for consultancies and body shops. I should have realized that the OP would've used the phrase "BS for" if he/she was referring to another programming language besides Java. I was thinking it might've been a typo for JS but it didn't seem to fit the context for body shops.

Apparently Apple created a language called "Bs" but I figured it couldn't be that either. And someone did create a BSLang, but as a joke.

Lesson learned for how the mind can steer itself in the wrong direction based on an erroneous assumption from an inaccurate reading.

BS is most of the time a slang for Bullshit.

the start-up situation sounds pretty similar

Thanks. This should've been my first assumption. I should've realised there was no "for" after BS.

The EU has dozens of countries, and within each country you've got distinct markets dominating in different cities. If you have a country/city in mind it's best to aim for that market, otherwise any advice is too general to help you.

While it is no longer in the EU per se, the City in London may be one of the few places in Europe that is directly comparable to, and competitive with, the US in terms of job opportunities in software and fintech.

It's completely different from the EU days, and it's no longer in the EU, full stop. Getting a visa for UK isn't really any easier than $any_other_country. Not only that, it's often quite a bit more expensive with the NHS surcharge and such.

And the salary sucks. There's a new ai super computing cluster in Bristol that's connected with HPE and their salary would be half what I make in Norway. Highly interesting jobs but not highly interesting salaries.

ASML EUV IP is licensed from EUV LLC which is an LLC formed by the DOE and a bunch of labs such as LL and Berkeley which commercialized the EUV lithography IP they developed in the 90’s.

That licensing deal comes with a lot of strings attached including congressional oversight.

Their EUV light source is made by Cymer which they acquired another US company.

ASML might be HQed in NL but I’m not sure you can call it a European company anymore.

In that light you can also call TSMC a Dutch company because it was struggling. Phillips (Dutch) bought a 30% share and grew the company.

Those shares are now sold again but Phillips had a big role in creating TSMC.

There is a big difference between investment and your core IP being subject to congressional oversight.

Afaik they are compelled not to sell to china because of US policy. is this really a competitor?

This is because almost all of the critical EUV tech was developed by the US DOE and a US industry consortium plus a US valley company called Cymer and was transferred to ASML as a political move that excluded the Japanese companies in the space.

This is not to say ASML is not an impressive company, but it's amazing to see it held up as proof of Europe having a real tech industry.

This all used to be on the ASML site, but they appear to have scrubbed it. See https://imgur.com/gallery/8G08q2c

Estonia will be the European Silicon Valley. It allows companies to incorporate there without residency and has low taxes. It's the only EU member that allows that. By incorporating there, companies get access to EU economic mechanisms and the ability to form distributed teams around Europe. This kind of remote-first distribution will be the future. Workers that start with residency there can get a schengen visa which allows low-friction travel to most other European countries.

Important to note that you are talking about "e-residency" [1], which does not grant any real residencies or travel permission to Estonia or EU. For that, one needs to apply for a temporary residence permit (TRP) separately, on one of the valid grounds [2].

[1]: https://www.e-resident.gov.ee

[2]: https://www2.politsei.ee/en/teenused/residence-permit/tahtaj...

The closest thing Europe has to Silicon Valley is probably Sweden's Stockholm region, but it is nowhere near as close. To be fair the tech companies that ARE in Europe are more spread out across the country instead of being all concentrated in a single region. It is probably part of the reason why Europe didn't create any Big Tech company.

SV is about venture capital availability. There is no such thing in Europe even close to SV.

You need to print the paper that runs trade to have that kind of money to throw around.

there is VC money in Europe, especially in Stockholm and Berlin. But it is pittance compared to the VC money in silicon valley

> You need to print the paper that runs trade to have that kind of money to throw around.

I see what you are getting at, but I am not quite sure it is correct. The money that fuels silicon valley VC mostly come from big financial institutions who are backed by investments, mostly pension funds and real state mortgages. Not by petro-dollar fuelled subsidies from government. Although this could have been what triggered the valley to grow so fast in the 70s and what we see today is just a consequence.

I believe that this is also the reason why the VC money in the US is so concentrated in a single location and so dispersed in Europe. Capital flows freely in the US while in Europe capital movement was a lot more constrained historically due to different currencies and fiscal policies. I suspect that this is the same reason why tech in China is all in Shenzen

But I am not familiar enough with the economics of the valley so I could be wrong on my thinking.

There's a big bias ITT. It's not Estonia, it's not Stockholm. If at all it's Berlin or London or Amsterdam.

London only, Berlin has just rocket internet and a couple of startups that came out of it, and Amsterdam.. lol

Berlin still is one of the biggest places when it comes to VC money, like it or not. I don't like it as well.

Yeah but it's still less than half the amount of VC money of London, and Amsterdam is slightly higher than half of the VC money of Berlin, it's like 2bnGBP, 900mEUR, 650mEUR, as far as I remember

Well, we have to make due with what we have haha. The comparison between SV and Europe is baseless anyway

Where does ASML (and the industry) go after EUV?

They are currently at 10E-9 m wavelengths, right up against the x-ray spectrum, and you can't focus that kind of light with glass optics.

Europe isn't a country, so there cannot be a european answer to silicon valley, but only <european country>'s answer to silicon valley

The typical ASML employee will have done a Ph.D in Applied Physics or Applied Mathematics and gone straight into a lifelong career with this one company. It is actually very different from the typical SWE in SV. Same applies for its partners Zeiss and Trumpf.

The TSMC profit margin is impressive. Looks like 45%.

cookie popups?

Privacy?

Sausage?

2 minutes, Turkish.

You said that 2 minutes ago!

Silicon Valley is literally the main and only reason they exist in the form they exist today. EU had literally nothing to do with them.

ASML relies on the EUV technology developed in the United States by DARPA, which it has acquired by buying an American company it was initially exclusively licensed to (Nikon and Canon were the first in line to license it, but the deal didn’t happen due to “national security reasons”).

So, ASML is not a paragon of European innovation. Its success is accidental, and stems from a technology originated in the United States. European Silicon Valley is a contradiction in terms.

You mean like OpenAI, whose LLM tech is heavily based on original research done quite a while ago by Jürgen Schmidhuber in Germany? Does that now make OpenAI and the LLM hype a paragon of European innovation, and its success "accidential"?

Yeah, with that kind of argument nearly all successes could be called accidental.

Because the origin of ideas is important. But yes, we have some original ideas in European academia. Our startup scene however is absolutely laughable (the only two countries that at least trying to do something are France and Estonia, the rest don’t even understand the problem). The “innovation grants” of 30 thousand euros (what anyone is supposed to do with these?), endless copycat companies working in “sustainability” or other European buzzword du jour which will never be scaled even in principle… etc etc.

In Switzerland. And yes, deep learning scaling (by solving the vanishing gradient problem) was discovered by him, but this was a previous era of AI. LLMs required a lot of new ideas on top of that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com