ASML (AML NA) is building a hybrid bonding tool, while hybrid bonding is viewed as the most important process innovation since EUV, according SemiAnalysis Blog

Sourcing matters here: this is a research blog report rather than a company announcement, and ASML has a long record of letting strategic R&D programmes surface through the supply chain and specialist press well before formal disclosure. The substantive read is that hybrid bonding, the die-to-wafer stacking technique central to advanced packaging roadmaps, has so far sat largely with the back-end equipment names rather than the lithography incumbents, so an ASML entry would extend its franchise from front-end patterning into packaging-adjacent process steps, a direction the industry has been drifting as scaling shifts from transistor shrink to stacking. Comparisons to EUV as a process innovation set a high bar; EUV took ASML the better part of two decades and heavy customer co-investment to commercialise, which is the relevant template for timeline expectations rather than near-term revenue. Worth watching is whether ASML confirms the programme, which existing hybrid bonding suppliers it would compete with or partner alongside, and whether leading foundry and memory customers signal adoption intent, since tool development at this stage typically runs years ahead of order flow. For the equipment peer set, the distinction to draw is between validation of the hybrid bonding thesis broadly, which lifts the whole advanced packaging chain, and share questions among the incumbent bonding toolmakers.