ASM International N.V. — AI supply-chain exposure

ASM International is a Dutch semiconductor-equipment maker and the clear leader in atomic layer deposition — the technique that lays down films one atomic layer at a time — plus the epitaxy tools used at the most advanced nodes. As transistors shift to gate-all-around structures and rely on ultra-thin high-k dielectric layers, ALD becomes essential to building them at all. That makes ASM a critical supplier to the leading-edge logic lines at TSMC, Samsung, and Intel Foundry.

Its structural hook is a dominant position in a specific, hard-to-replicate deposition step that only matters more as geometries shrink. Gate-all-around and the next logic generations require more ALD passes, so each node transition pulls through more of ASM's tools — a step-change in demand rather than a steady drift. Because few rivals can match its ALD know-how, it holds real leverage over a chokepoint in the foundry flow that GPUs, custom ASICs, and the memory beside them all pass through. The model weights it for owning that leading-edge deposition bottleneck.