High-NA EUV Tool Starts Arriving at Albany NanoTech

North America's First Publicly Owned High-NA EUV Machine Starts Arriving in Albany

The base module of a roughly $400 million ASML system landed at the Albany NanoTech Complex, where a $10 billion partnership will open next-generation lithography to researchers who could never buy one.

The first major components of an ASML High-NA EUV lithography system arrived at the Albany NanoTech Complex in New York on July 21 — specifically the bottom main module that forms the base of the mainframe. The remaining sections ship over the coming weeks; nothing is installed or operational yet.

What the claim actually is

This is not the first High-NA EUV machine in the United States. Intel took delivery of an ASML TWINSCAN EXE:5000 in Hillsboro, Oregon in late 2023, completed assembly in April 2024, and began High-NA production use around July 15, 2026. What Albany has is different: North America's first publicly owned, openly accessible High-NA research site.

The money behind it

The tools cost roughly $400 million apiece. The Albany site is backed by a $1 billion New York State investment leveraging $9 billion in industry funding — a $10 billion partnership whose members include IBM, Micron and Tokyo Electron. It is being installed in the new NanoFab Reflection building, topped out in December 2025.

Research, not production

Albany will not make commercial chips. NY CREATES runs shared R&D on integrating High-NA into manufacturing flows — process recipes, defectivity, yield — the work that determines whether the technology is usable at scale. The comparison most often drawn is with Belgium's imec. NY CREATES chief executive Dave Anderson called the arrival "transformative," saying the site is "kind of at the epicenter" of next-generation technology development.

What to watch next

The milestone that matters is "first light" — the moment the EUV source is switched on — targeted before the end of 2026, not full production operation.

Why It Matters

High-NA EUV is the gate on the next few generations of AI silicon, and until now access in North America meant being Intel. A shared, publicly owned tool lets universities, smaller device makers and materials suppliers work on the process problems that decide whether High-NA reaches volume manufacturing on schedule.