Arthur del Prado

Arthur del Prado founded and ran Advanced Semiconductor Materials International (ASMI) and was a pioneer of the European semiconductor equipment industry, having first brought silicon from Silicon Valley to Europe in 1958. He took ASMI public on Nasdaq in 1981, the first Dutch company to do so, which is why funding the joint venture was feasible even though the required investment was close to ASMI entire 1982 revenue. Del Prado learned about the Philips PAS 2000 project in October 1982 and saw a partnership with Philips as his route into lithography, a market he judged impossible to enter alone against the established players. The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs supported the pairing as a way to build national capability in microelectronics.

Del Prado contribution to ASML was structural and financial rather than technical. ASM International supplied half the equity, the corporate structure and existing relationships in the semiconductor equipment industry, and adding lithography would have made ASM close to a one-stop shop for chipmaking equipment. Philips had initially dismissed ASM as an upstart and preferred Perkin Elmer; only when those talks collapsed did Philips Science & Industry technical director Georg de Kruyff resume discussions with del Prado in the spring of 1983, and the two sides agreed terms quickly. The investment proved heavier than ASM could sustain. By 1988, with ASML still short of customers and consuming cash, ASM International withdrew from the venture, and Philips funded the rescue that kept it alive. Del Prado remains recognized as a founding figure of the Dutch and European semiconductor equipment industry. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).