Not quite. A lot of the research on EUV was in collaboration with various national laboratories and universities. They were far from the only ones thinking it c

Not quite. A lot of the research on EUV was in collaboration with various national laboratories and universities. They were far from the only ones thinking it could be done. The Chinese themselves wanted to give it a shot before ASML proved it was possible. It's mostly that ASML's competition generally wasn't keeping up. They have a monopoly even on last-gen DUV. Canon and Nikon didn't keep up and couldn't afford to work on EUV.