Heya and welcome to Five Things Tech!
Here’s your Sunday morning smörgåsbord of the latest developments in tech. As always, it is a seemingly random selection of topics, but actually all these topics are tied together. Tech is moving rapidly and I think it makes a ton of sense to at least try to understand what is going on. This is what I am trying to accomplish every week.
I hope you like these Five Things Tech!
The ASML Monopoly: Platform and Ecosystem Leadership in EUV Lithography
Based in the Netherlands, ASML (the acronym name is derived from Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography) is Europe’s most valuable technology company. It produces approximately 90% of all lithography tools and is the only supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) systems, a critical manufacturing technology. ASML has a market value of approximately $677 billion, with more than $37 billion in FY 2025 revenues, $11 billion in profits, and 44,000 employees. But the company’s de facto monopoly is not based on a single breakthrough innovation. Rather, it results from decades of foresighted investment combined with extraordinary platform leadership and ecosystem management skills. No competitor has yet been able to reproduce the core technology or the full stack of system capabilities needed for EUV lithography.
ASML is one impressive company. Yet while Europe has the company that makes the chip industry happen, it made zero revenue last quarter from European companies.
“Offensively cheap”: Solar power is looking up
Cheaper panels enabled a vast rollout in China itself and helped solar generation evolve from a subsidized technology deployed mostly in markets looking to decarbonize to a vital source of electricity in areas where power is scarce, expensive or unreliable. That process started in countries like Pakistan, Brazil, and South Africa and has now spread to other parts of Africa and the Philippines.
Based on analysis of customs data, Ember estimates that Africa will install around 17 gigawatts of new solar this year. It believes most of that will be small-scale installations at factories or other businesses. “If you’re a business, you’re using electricity during the day—it’s a natural fit for you to use solar,” says Jones.
But solar is also a boon for households. “A home goes from burning two or three kerosene lanterns to a light that is 20 to 40 times brighter, [turned] on every day,” says Anish Thakkar, co-founder of Sun King, a Kenyan business which lends families money to pay for solar and battery installations.
This is so awesome. Just imagine what is possible now. Cheap energy available virtually everywhere, now we just need to get battery storage a lot cheaper, but this will happen next.
Cracks in Oracle’s AI Data-Center Build-Out Appear in Massive New Mexico Project
Around a year ago, OpenAI signed a contract with Oracle to buy $300 billion in cloud-computing services over the following five years. Oracle didn’t yet have the data-center footprint to deliver that kind of capacity, so it quickly signed leases to occupy new mega-facilities that would be developed in Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan and New Mexico, representing around 4.5 gigawatts of computing capacity.
Banks signed on to provide tens of billions of dollars in loans to build the facilities, which were branded as being part of OpenAI’s Stargate initiative. For the New Mexico campus, a group of about 20 banks provided $18 billion in construction financing. Blue Owl funds contributed about $3 billion of equity.
Pulling the force majeure lever buys Oracle some time but doesn’t reduce its financial exposure to the data center. Oracle can defer payments until the power comes on, but that triggers an automatic extension of the duration of its lease, meaning that the ultimate amount it pays to Stack wouldn’t decline.
I do not want to sound too much like I am full of Schadenfreude here, but I think we need to make sure Larry Ellison doesn’t succeed in his bit to control even more of the tech industry.
No cities on the Moon — there isn’t enough water, scientists say
There are potential solutions. We could improve the efficiency of water recycling by a factor of five or more; lower water usage from new techniques such as vertical farming; import water, probably from accessible asteroids; or, simply, find more water. Of these it may be this last hope that is most promising. Current water surveying techniques do not reach below the surface more than a few meters, while the rubble-like rocks of the surface regolith typically extend tens of meters down and may contain water in the cold traps. If the ambitious plans of the space billionaires are to be realized, then finding more water will be the first step.
While I think a city on a moon is a fascinating tech challenge, I really am not the least bit interest in relocating there.
GDPR trap Smart Glasses: Data protectionists warn wearers of legal violations
The data protection officers particularly criticize the further processing of the recorded information for AI applications. If captured image material is used to train the artificial intelligence of the glasses manufacturers, there is usually no legal basis for this. Automatic, AI-supported facial recognition in public spaces is also impermissible.
Despite the criticism, the supervisory authorities are not closing their eyes to the opportunities offered by the technology. Smart glasses can be useful, for example, as a hands-free navigation aid at work or as support for blind people in everyday life. Nevertheless, the DSK warns that what is technically feasible should not be equated with what is legally permissible. Secret filming, photographing, and especially publishing such recordings on the internet can have significant legal consequences, as the infringement of fundamental rights is serious.
Most people think people who wear AI glasses are “glassholes”, but I think this will change over time. Why? Because we are still really early in the development of this product category and we will figure out to get AI glasses more useful and less privacy evasive.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! If you missed last week’s Five Things Tech, you can find it here:
🤖
— Nico