Huawei Leads China's Homegrown DUV Lithography Push, Targeting 12 Units by Year-End
nashnova research
Huawei is orchestrating China's first domestically developed advanced DUV lithography machine, with affiliate Yuliangsheng targeting 12 units by year-end — but the two most critical components, projection lenses and light sources, still depend on foreign suppliers, and full parity with ASML remains years away.
What role is Huawei actually playing?
According to the Financial Times, Huawei sits at the center of China's strategy to eliminate foreign dependence in its semiconductor supply chain — investing in lithography-equipment firms and pushing domestic tools into leading fabs such as SMIC.
Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon described Huawei's role as "project management." A DUV lithography machine — a tool that uses deep-ultraviolet light to etch circuits onto chips — involves thousands of suppliers. Someone has to coordinate.
This means → Huawei is not building the machine itself. It is acting as the central integrator, stitching a scattered domestic supply chain into one working system.
Who is Yuliangsheng, and how far along is the machine?
Yuliangsheng (裕量晟) is a Shanghai chip-equipment maker spun out of SiCarrier, a Huawei-linked startup. It has co-developed China's first advanced DUV lithography prototype. Huawei denies any ties to SiCarrier.
The prototype is being tested at SMIC and on Huawei's own production lines. It currently operates at the 28 nm node and uses multi-patterning — exposing the same wafer repeatedly to print finer lines — to attempt 7 nm chips.
Yuliangsheng plans to produce 12 DUV machines by year-end. In plain terms = moving from "one prototype exists" to "twelve units in a year" is the leap from lab to low-volume production line.
Which components are the real bottleneck?
A DUV lithography machine contains tens of thousands of parts across roughly twelve major subsystems. Chinese suppliers still lag foreign rivals in the two hardest ones: projection lenses and light sources.
For lenses, Yuliangsheng currently uses optics made by Germany's Zeiss. Zeiss says it sells lithography optics only to ASML, but industry sources say the lenses may be sourced through China's secondary market.
For light sources, Japan's Gigaphoton and ASML subsidiary Cymer dominate. China has no mature alternative. This means → even if the full machine can be assembled, its two most precise "heart components" remain in foreign suppliers' hands.
Where is Huawei putting its money?
Huawei's venture arm Hubble Investment (哈勃投资) and a second Huawei-linked fund, Shenzhen Yuanzhi Xinghuo (元智星火), have co-invested in Fujian Zhiqi Photonics — an ultra-precision optics maker spun off from listed firm Fujing Technology, aiming to replace Zeiss in projection lenses.
In 2023 Yuanzhi Xinghuo paid RMB 100 million (≈ US$15 million) for a 37% stake in Zhiqi Photonics. In plain terms = Huawei is not just coordinating at the system level — it is pouring capital directly into the weakest link: lenses.
This reflects Huawei's playbook: whichever component depends most on imports gets priority capital and supply-chain integration first.
How far is this from actually replacing ASML?
People familiar with the matter say Yuliangsheng's DUV machines are still years away from matching ASML's throughput levels.
With support from Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE), Yuliangsheng is developing multiple prototypes in parallel: some rely on key foreign parts, others test domestic alternatives — two tracks running side by side.
This means → in the near term, Chinese fabs making advanced chips still depend heavily on ASML, whose most advanced tools are already restricted from sale to China under Western export controls. Whether Huawei's systematic push can ultimately produce a commercially viable domestic alternative chain is the key test of China's chip-independence strategy.
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