The Dutch semiconductor industry has more than doubled in six years, with turnover reaching €46 billion in 2025, according to the first detailed measurement of the sector by the national statistics office CBS.
The industry’s national turnover stood at €21 billion in 2019, CBS said, growing by an average of 14% a year since. Employment nearly doubled over the same period, from 23,000 people to more than 43,000.
The figures are provisional estimates from a new method CBS is still developing, which combines its own data with government figures. They cover more than 300 companies – not only chipmakers and the machine builders that supply them, but firms providing parts and services to the sector.
Not just ASML
ASML, the Veldhoven-based maker of the world’s most advanced chip machines, is also the country’s most valuable listed company. It reported record worldwide sales of €32.7 billion in 2025 and employs around 20,000 people in the Netherlands.
Newer companies are also adding to the total, with companies entering the sector since 2019 accounting for about €400 million in growth, CBS said. Firms such as chip metrology company Nearfield Instruments, which raised $380 million this year, are among those trying to build positions alongside ASML.
Chips and AI
The sector’s growth comes with the boom in AI, globalisation and security, which CBS is now studying more closely. “AI is highly dependent on chips. The semiconductor industry is therefore the technical engine beneath all the developments we are seeing in the field of AI,” said Marjolijn Jaarsma, CBS’s international trade spokesperson.
Dennis Cremers, the project lead behind the research, said the industry was one of the most globalised in the world. “Take the newest GPU and AI chips: they are designed in the United States and manufactured in East Asia using, among other things, Dutch machines,” he said.
“Ultimately they end up in enormous datacentres where the newest AI models are trained. The Netherlands has a unique role in this, particularly in machine-building.”
