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I am far from an expert, mostly parroting what I've heard from actual experts, but I think it gets back perhaps to a similar question of why doesn't ASML 'just'

I am far from an expert, mostly parroting what I've heard from actual experts, but I think it gets back perhaps to a similar question of why doesn't ASML 'just' start a fabrication business since they already have the tools, and at cost no less? The answer to that seemingly no brainer question is the exact same reason that TSMC have an edge over other fabs. There's a massive, incredible amount of complexity in the fabrication process, in particular doing it with economical yields - it's a completely separate business really. In fact it might be the latter that's the least copyable part. For sure once competitors see that something is possible, some valuable information has been exposed, but doing that economically at scale is another matter entirely - and that's where there's a business to compete with. That can't simply be reverse-engineered or copied because the myriad details of the process are incredibly closely guarded IP!

akiselev 3y ago
Even then getting ASML equipment at cost only saves a few hundred million. They'd still be left with almost $20 billion in other expenses like the hundreds of millions in robotics and material handling equipment (the most precise in the world), hundreds of millions in HVAC and electrical equipment (heavily specialized to fabs), hundreds of millions in chemical cleaning (ditto), hundreds of millions in structure dampening, hundreds of millions in doping and chemical vapor deposition equipment, all the permitting and civil infrastructure to support the fab (water and power), and so on and on for a very long list. The core competency of a semiconductor fab is getting all of that equipment to work together. It's more systems engineering (in the old school NASA sense) than anything else.