Samsung Delays Taking Deliveries of ASML Chip Gear for Its New US Factory, Sources Say

FILE PHOTO: A worker waters a flower bed next to the logo of Samsung Electronics during a media tour at Samsung Electronics' headquarters in Suwon, South Korea, June 13, 2023. (REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File photo)

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics has postponed taking deliveries of ASML chipmaking equipment for its upcoming factory in Texas as it has yet to win any major customers for the project, three people familiar with the matter said.

Samsung has been also holding off on placing orders to some other suppliers for the $17 billion factory in Taylor city, prompting them to look for other customers and send staff deployed on site back home, three other people familiar with the matter said.

The delay in equipment deliveries is a fresh setback to the Taylor project, which is at the heart of Samsung chairman Jay Y. Lee's ambition to expand beyond its bread-and-butter memory chips into contract chip manufacturing, which Taiwan's TSMC dominates.

It underscores the widening gulf between Samsung and rivals such as TSMC and SK Hynix which are ramping up production of high-end chips to cater to booming demand from artificial intelligence applications.

ASML, the world's biggest chipmaking equipment supplier, cut its 2025 sales forecast on Tuesday, citing weakness in markets other than AI, and delayed fabs.

The Dutch company did not name clients who have delayed their fabs. Reuters is the first to report that Samsung has pushed back deliveries of some ASML equipment.

Two of the sources said the delayed shipments to Samsung's Taylor factory involve ASML's advanced chipmaking equipment called extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.

One of them said the deliveries were scheduled earlier this year but the machines have not been shipped yet. The third source said Samsung has pushed back delivery of some ASML equipment to the factory, without elaborating on the equipment or the revised delivery schedule.

EUV machines, which cost around $200 million each, create design features on silicon wafers by using beams of light and are widely used to manufacture advanced chips found in smartphones, electronic devices and AI servers.

It was not clear how many EUV machines Samsung had ordered or what payment terms it had entered into.

ASML and Samsung declined to comment on the ASML matter. All of the sources Reuters spoke to declined to be identified as they were not authorised to talk to the media.



(Reporting by Heekyong Yang, Hyunjoo Jin, Toby Sterling, Fanny Potkin and Kyrstal Hu; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Muralikumar Anantharaman)