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Comment by httpz | Hacker News Reader

Zeiss -> ASML -> TSMC -> Nvidia

Seems crazy that there are no alternatives for these four companies in the high end AI semiconductor supply chain.

That perspective is a little wrong; those are the 4 companies on the edge of a wave of technological improvement. It isn't unusual for there to be unique companies in those circumstances. For example when Apple hit the market with the iPhone back in '07 there were similar things going on. One of the things that hamstrung Apple's competitors was that nobody in the supply could manufacture equivalent parts.

Those 4 companies aren't without competitors. But if you pick the best in each category there is (funnily enough) only one option and right now chaining them together gets a noticeably better product than anyone else can build. That isn't normal but it also isn't that weird for new products.

If you want what Nvidia was building a few years ago there are several of options.

Zeiss and ASML currently have no competitors in the EUV lithography space as everyone else dropped out. (There was a big switch from lenses to mirrors)

I won't rule out a direct competitor, but they have a substantial moat.

They face some pressure from indirect competition like Canon Nanoimprint though.

Another way of framing your opening is "a bunch of other companies are on the verge of figuring this out, but the market isn't big enough". EUV hasn't even been the done thing for all that long, I gather it is only the tech of choice for about a decade.

There are a bunch of thin bottlenecks and oligopolies in global supply chains. It is a big and complex world. But that leads to a situation where three things are true at once:

* There are companies that are expensive to replace.

* No single company is truly irreplaceable.

* On the cutting edge, it is common enough for there to be only one company that knows how to do something.

No way. The others are a decade out. That eulv machine is crazy, you should learn about it.

There are several companies in this space that are truly irreplaceable. Zeiss is definitely one.

When the MacBook Pro switched to Intel processors, Intel made an entirely new top bin for Apple and for something like six months they had exclusive right to it.

Oh favoritism and bribery! More like, small market that can deal with the fact that the vendor can only promise small deliveries. But also Intel trying to land a whale.

Wasnt it recently announced that Nvidia will use Intel's foundry? At least for Advanced Packaging

That would only replace TMSC. Zeiss and ASML would be still in the supply chain.

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