Artificial intelligence (AI) demand continues to fuel growth across the semiconductor industry, and Dutch semiconductor equipment leader ASML has announced it is joining the profit-sharing wave. The company will grant a one-time stock award of €20,000 (approximately NT$740,000) to each of its roughly 45,000 global employees, making it the latest “AI dividend beneficiary” to reward its workforce with concrete action.
According to an internal email sent by ASML last Friday (July 17), the company plans to formally grant the stock award on January 1, 2027. However, employees must remain with the company until January 1, 2030, for the shares to vest and become freely tradable. In effect, this is a long-term measure combining both incentive and retention goals, with a lock-up period of three years.
An ASML spokesperson responded to media inquiries by stating: “This stock incentive program is designed to recognize employees’ hard work, but more importantly, it is for the work that needs to be done in the coming years.” Based on ASML’s global workforce of approximately 44,500 to 45,000 employees, the total value of this one-time award approaches €900 million—a scale that is quite rare among European corporations.
Following Asian Chip Giants as Profit-Sharing Becomes an Industry Trend
ASML’s move is not an isolated case in the semiconductor industry. As the global investment boom in AI infrastructure continues to heat up, the entire industry chain—from chip manufacturing to equipment supply—is experiencing record revenues and profits. The pressure on companies to share these windfalls is growing by the day.
South Korea’s two memory chip giants were among the first to respond. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, buoyed by explosive demand growth for AI-critical components such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM), have successively distributed generous bonuses to their employees. Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s leading contract chipmaker, announced in May that the average profit-sharing payout for its employees in 2025 would increase by more than 30%, demonstrating its resolve to share the fruits of growth with its workforce.
ASML’s entry into this bonus wave is backed by solid financial performance. The company’s latest earnings report, released this Wednesday, showed second-quarter net sales of €9.33 billion and a net profit of €2.9 billion, both exceeding analyst expectations. More notably, ASML raised its full-year sales forecast for the second time this year, with the latest guidance range set at €43 billion to €45 billion—far surpassing the €39.3 billion analysts had previously anticipated—underscoring that the pull from AI demand on high-end semiconductor equipment is far stronger than imagined.
Expanding Production to Meet Order Surge; Musk Also in the Queue
To digest a massive order backlog extending to 2028, ASML simultaneously announced an aggressive production expansion plan. Output of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines will increase to 65 units this year, rise by another 30% next year, and the company is studying a further 30% expansion the year after. ASML is the world’s sole manufacturer of advanced EUV lithography equipment, a core tool indispensable for producing cutting-edge chips at 5-nanometer and below process nodes. Its customer base includes semiconductor titans such as TSMC, Samsung, and SK Hynix.
Notably, market sources indicate that the Terafab chip manufacturing project under Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, will also contribute significant new orders to ASML, further solidifying its market position.
Fueled by the AI investment wave, ASML’s stock price has surged over 60% year-to-date, with its latest market capitalization standing at approximately €590.3 billion, firmly holding the title of Europe’s most valuable listed company. Headquartered in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, ASML has become the flagship of Europe’s technology industry.
Handing Out Bonuses While Streamlining the Organization: A Tale of Two Fates for Employees
For some ASML employees, however, this €20,000 stock award may be nothing more than a figure in an email that they may never actually receive.
Earlier this year, the company announced that despite record-high performance in 2025, it would cut 1,700 positions, primarily targeting management roles within its information technology department. ASML explained at the time that the layoffs were due to an overly complex organizational structure that was hindering the efficiency of its core business operations. After months of negotiations with labor unions, both sides reached an agreement in June: the company pledged not to conduct compulsory layoffs before May 1, 2027, and will prioritize attempting to redeploy affected employees to other internal positions.
This means ASML is walking a delicate tightrope: on one hand, using generous long-term stock awards to retain key talent and motivate all employees for the technological challenges of the coming years; on the other hand, continuing to push organizational streamlining by cutting management layers and bureaucratic processes to maintain agility and efficiency amid fierce competition.
Institutional investors point out that the three-year lock-up period set by ASML for this incentive plan coincides precisely with the critical period for the company’s production expansion and the digestion of its massive order book. This can both boost employee morale and reduce the risk of losing core talent in the industry’s poaching wars. In the global semiconductor equipment market, while ASML enjoys a monopoly in the EUV segment, competitors such as Applied Materials, Lam Research, and Tokyo Electron are all actively positioning themselves, meaning the battle for talent will only intensify.
How to Distribute the AI Dividend: A New Industry Challenge Emerges
From TSMC, Samsung, and SK Hynix to ASML, the rollout of employee incentive programs by benchmark companies across the semiconductor supply chain reflects a deeper industrial shift: the enormous profits generated by AI are reshaping the profit distribution relationship between companies and their employees.
In the past, the semiconductor industry was characterized by pronounced cyclicality, and companies tended to hoard cash to weather downturns. However, the structural growth driven by AI demand has given the industry greater confidence in its long-term prospects, transforming “sharing the fruits of success with employees” from a slogan into concrete action. ASML’s move to grant a stock award package worth nearly €900 million to 45,000 global employees in one stroke not only sets a benchmark in terms of scale but may also prompt other tech giants that have yet to follow suit to re-examine their own compensation and incentive strategies.
For investors, while such employee rewards increase short-term expenses, their long-term positive effect on company value—if they help retain key technical talent and ensure the smooth progress of capacity expansion and order delivery—will far outweigh the costs. ASML’s stock price surge of 60% this year seems to confirm the market’s endorsement of this strategy.