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Samsung Electronics and ASML are doubling down on their decades-long partnership, announcing plans to bring High NA EUV lithography into DRAM mass production by 2028, a first for the industry. The move signals Samsung’s bet that next-gen chipmaking tools will be the difference-maker as AI demand pushes memory and logic chips to their physical limits.

Samsung Electronics is making its clearest move yet to stay ahead in the memory chip race, announcing an expanded partnership with ASML that puts High NA extreme ultraviolet, or EUV lithography, at the center of its next-generation manufacturing plans. The two companies confirmed in a joint statement that Samsung intends to introduce ASML’s High NA EUV tools into DRAM high-volume manufacturing by 2028, something no chipmaker has done before.

The timing isn’t random. Memory makers are under pressure to squeeze more performance out of every wafer as AI workloads balloon, and High NA EUV is the tool everyone’s been watching to see who moves first. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have all been racing to extend DRAM scaling, and this announcement puts Samsung ahead of the pack in publicly committing to a High NA timeline for memory production specifically.

[Embedded image: ASML High NA EUV lithography system on a fab floor]

Beyond DRAM, Samsung is also joining an industry push to shift from 6-inch photomasks, the format the chip industry has leaned on for decades, to a new 12-inch standard. That sounds like inside baseball, but it matters. Larger masks are expected to boost fab productivity, cut chipmaking costs, and remove what’s called stitching constraints, basically the seams that show up when patterns have to be pieced together across smaller masks. Without bigger masks, chipmakers can’t fully cash in on what High NA EUV promises. Samsung says its experience running both memory and foundry lines, plus years of EUV work, puts it in a strong spot to help build out the mask technology and supporting infrastructure the whole industry will need.

“The AI era is transforming the semiconductor industry and increasing the importance of technological innovation across the entire value chain,” Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman and CEO Young Hyun Jun said in the companies’ announcement. “By further strengthening our collaboration with ASML, we are helping lay the foundation for the next generation of AI and semiconductor innovation.”

ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet framed it as a continuation of a relationship that’s already shaped the industry. “Samsung has been one of ASML’s most important innovation partners for many years,” Fouquet said in the same release. “As the industry enters a new era driven by artificial intelligence, close collaboration with our customers becomes even more important.”

[Video iframe: ASML explainer on High NA EUV technology]

This isn’t Samsung and ASML’s first rodeo. The Dutch lithography giant has essentially had a monopoly on EUV tools for years, and every major chipmaker, from TSMC to Intel, depends on ASML’s roadmap to plan their own. That gives ASML enormous leverage, but it also means partnerships like this one are as much about securing tool access and priority as they are about joint R&D. Samsung getting a first-mover claim on High NA EUV for DRAM is a signal to the market that it’s not ceding ground to Hynix or Micron on the memory side, even as it continues its uphill battle against TSMC in foundry.

What happens next is worth watching closely. High NA EUV systems are notoriously expensive and complex to deploy at scale, and 2028 is still a few years out, plenty of time for delays or for competitors to make their own announcements. The photomask transition adds another layer of coordination since it requires buy-in from mask suppliers and equipment makers across the supply chain, not just Samsung and ASML. But if Samsung pulls this off on schedule, it gives the company a genuine technical edge in DRAM scaling right as AI infrastructure demand for high-bandwidth memory keeps climbing. That’s the real subtext here: this is as much a memory chip story as it is a lithography story, and the two are becoming impossible to separate.

For anyone tracking the AI hardware buildout, this deal is a reminder that the real bottleneck isn’t just GPUs, it’s the machines that make the chips underneath everything. Samsung betting on a 2028 timeline for High NA EUV DRAM production is a bold marker in an industry where ASML’s tools set the pace for everyone, and it puts pressure on rivals like SK Hynix, Micron, and TSMC to show their own hand. The next few years will tell whether Samsung’s early commitment translates into a real manufacturing edge or just a head start on paper.