Veeco Instruments — AI supply-chain exposure

Veeco makes specialised semiconductor-manufacturing equipment — laser annealing systems, ion-beam deposition tools used to build the mask blanks that EUV lithography depends on, and MOCVD reactors that grow the compound-semiconductor layers behind lasers and power devices. It sits in the chips layer as an equipment supplier, upstream of the foundries that actually pattern silicon. In the model its exposures run to foundry capacity and to indium phosphide, the material behind optical components.

Veeco is a picks-and-shovels name: it ships no chips itself, but sells the process tools that make advanced silicon and the optics feeding AI datacenters possible. Its structural leverage is niche but defensible — several of its tools address narrow steps, such as EUV mask blanks and compound-semiconductor epitaxy, where credible alternatives are few. That specialisation is why the model places it as a supplier into foundry capacity rather than at the centre: genuine exposure to the build-out, captured through a handful of process bottlenecks.