Dutch tech giant ASML warned Wednesday of a steep fall in its China business next year, as it booked flat net profits in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the same period last year.

Traders appeared to see the glass half-full, with ASML shares opening more than 3% higher in Amsterdam, buoyed by solid sales and orders for its cutting-edge semiconductor production machines.

ASML has faced growing pressure from US and Dutch export curbs for its most advanced chipmaking tools to China, as Beijing and Western nations are locked in a battle for the key sector.

“We expect China customer demand, and therefore our China total net sales in 2026, to decline significantly compared to our very strong business there in 2024 and 2025,” said CEO Christophe Fouquet in a statement.

The firm announced net profits of 2.13 billion euros ($2.5 billion), after 2.08 billion euros in the third quarter of last year.

Net sales in the third quarter of 2025 came in at 7.5 billion euros. ASML had forecast a figure between 7.4 billion euros and 7.9 billion euros.

“Our third-quarter total net sales… were in line with guidance, reflecting a good quarter for ASML,” said Fouquet.

In July, the firm had warned that geopolitical and trade tensions had clouded the near-term outlook for its growth.

ASML said then that it could not confirm it would be in the black in 2026.

But on Wednesday, Fouquet said, “We do not expect 2026 total net sales to be below 2025,” adding that the firm would give more details on next year’s outlook in January.

“I think we have seen a flow of positive news in the last few months that has helped to reduce some of the uncertainties we discussed last quarter,” said Fouquet.

The CEO said he expected sales in the fourth quarter to come in between 9.2 billion and 9.8 billion euros.

For the full year 2025, the firm predicts a 15% increase in total net sales.

Net bookings, the figure most closely watched in the markets as a predictor of future performance, reached 5.4 billion euros, compared to 5.5 billion in the second quarter.

According to a presentation posted on the firm’s website, sales to China represented 42% of ASML’s overall business in the third quarter, up from 27% in the second quarter.

Geopolitical battleground

Longer-term, ASML believes that the rapidly expanding AI market will push up its annual sales to between 44 billion and 60 billion euros by 2030.

ASML is a critical cog in the global economy, as the semiconductors crafted with its tools power everything from smartphones to missiles.

Semiconductors have become something of a global geopolitical battlefield.

Washington has sought to curb exports of high-tech chips to China, worried they could be used to fuel Beijing’s military.

Last week, a US Congressional committee report said five companies, including ASML, had sold $38 billion worth of critical tech to China in 2024, including to firms flagged as US national security threats.

“China is striving with all its might to build a domestic, self-sufficient semiconductor manufacturing industry,” the report said.

Earlier this week, chip-related tensions grew between China and the Netherlands after the Dutch government took control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia, citing national security concerns.

That meant while the company—based in the Dutch city of Nijmegen—can continue production, the Dutch government can block or reverse its decisions.

Parent company Wingtech said it was appealing to Chinese authorities for support and discussing legal action with international law firms.

© 2025 AFP

In the closing moments of Monday’s flight, Starship flexed its flaps to perform a “dynamic banking maneuver” over the Indian Ocean, then flipped upright and fired its engines to slow for splashdown, simulating maneuvers the rocket will execute on future missions returning to the launch site. That will be one of the chief goals for the next phase of Starship’s test campaign beginning next year.

Patience for V3

It will likely be at least a few months before SpaceX is ready to launch the next Starship flight. Technicians at Starbase are assembling the next Super Heavy booster and the first Starship V3 vehicle. Once integrated, the booster and ship are expected to undergo cryogenic testing and static-fire testing before SpaceX moves forward with launch.

“Focus now turns to the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy, with multiple vehicles currently in active build and preparing for tests,” SpaceX wrote on its website. “This next iteration will be used for the first Starship orbital flights, operational payload missions, propellant transfer, and more as we iterate to a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle with service to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond.”

Starship V3 will have larger propellant tanks to increase the rocket’s lifting capacity, upgraded Raptor 3 engines, and an improved payload compartment to support launches of real Starlink satellites. SpaceX will also use this version of the rocket for orbital refueling experiments, a long-awaited milestone for the Starship program now planned for sometime next year. Orbital refueling is a crucial enabler for future Starship flights beyond low Earth orbit and is necessary for SpaceX to fulfill Musk’s ambition to send ships to Mars, the founder’s long-held goal for the company.

It’s also required for Starship flights to the moon. NASA has signed contracts with SpaceX worth more than $4 billion to develop a human-rated derivative of Starship to land astronauts on the moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program. The orbital refueling demonstration is a key milestone on the NASA lunar lander contract. Getting this done as soon as possible is vitally important to NASA, which is seeing its Artemis moon-landing schedule slip, in part due to Starship delays.

The massive acceleration in the use of AI across industries has been a key driver in the necessity of mass build out of datacentres, yet research from Neos Networks warns that such plans may not come to fruition as mass availability fibre remains the critical bottleneck that could slow the UK’s digital growth.

The study, carried out in August 2025 in partnership with Censuswide, surveyed the opinion of 100 datacentre decision-makers, 100 large enterprise tech/IT decision-makers (with at least 1,000 employees), and 100 local government stakeholders. To add to the research findings, Neos also conducted qualitative interviews with UK-based datacentre operator Kao Data and global property consultancy Knight Frank during August and September 2025.

Across all three parties, there was an overwhelming consensus that core fibre networks do and will form the foundation of the UK’s AI infrastructure, and 95% of the operators surveyed said that access to new high-capacity fibre networks will now influence their expansion plans.

Fundamentally, the survey observed that AI was reshaping the UK’s datacentre and digital strategy. It acknowledged that the UK government has set out its ambition to position the country as a global leader in AI, with initiatives such as AI Growth Zones in the AI opportunities action plan central to this vision.

The research showed these policies were already shaping investment and strategy across the ecosystem. Some 96% of datacentre operators said AI Growth Zones were influencing expansion and site selection, with 44% citing them as a strong influence. Just over two-thirds of enterprises viewed AI Growth Zones as a strong driver of change in their infrastructure planning.

Neos said this momentum was fuelling growth corridors beyond London. While 23% of datacentre operators still expect investment in Greater London, a greater share pointed to the North of England and the Midlands (39%), signalling a shift towards regional hubs of AI activity. Neos added that such diversification was mirrored in the way compute is being deployed. Almost all (97%) datacentre operators expected up to half of their UK compute to move to the edge of the network by 2030, underlining the need for high-performance, resilient fibre across every region.

Yet somewhat worryingly, the survey discovered that as many as 82% of UK datacentre operators have delayed site builds or expansion due to fibre availability, and almost half (45%) of enterprises cited fibre as the key bottleneck holding back AI and digital infrastructure. One in six companies (16%) doubted the ability of the UK’s current fibre infrastructure to support their AI ambitions. 41% of datacentre leaders believed the UK’s fibre networks were only partially prepared to support regional AI workloads, and more than 70% of enterprises felt the UK’s attractiveness for datacentre investment needed improvement (53%) or was lagging (17%).

Looking at local government stakeholders, 89% of the cohort reported that fibre gaps have delayed infrastructure projects in their regions with almost half (46%) of local government authorities highlighting that their region’s fibre infrastructure was not fully ready to support AI datacentres.

Yet the report also highlighted a way forward by unlocking opportunity through new fibre backbone projects which were seen as critical to unlocking growth. Nearly all respondents agreed that investment in high-capacity fibre corridors will transform confidence in the UK’s ability to attract and scale AI projects.

Moreover, 95% of datacentre operators, 96% of enterprises and 96% of local authorities said new fibre corridors into underserved areas would positively impact AI and datacentre growth. More than half of local authorities (53%) regarded such projects as potentially transformative for their regions.

Assessing the core trends revealed in the research, Neos Networks CEO Lee Myall said that while the UK has the ambition, the demand and the regional readiness to lead in AI, if the country did not address fibre gaps, it risks losing out on one of the “greatest economic opportunities” of a generation.

“Over the past decade, we’ve seen a huge amount of investment in last-mile fibre builds, but core fibre networks across the country have received much less attention. Without them, workloads cannot move between datacentres, data cannot be trained and investments stall,” he remarked.

“AI is no longer a future ambition, it’s here today, reshaping how businesses, communities and governments operate. But the UK cannot lead in AI on yesterday’s infrastructure, and we need continued investment in the fibre backbones that connect every region of the country. At Neos, we’re committed to building those foundations so the UK can not only keep pace but compete and thrive in the global AI race.”