Dutch chip gear firm ASM International NV said the impact on its sales from US semiconductor export controls on China is “not a big deal” amid strong demand for chips driven by artificial intelligence applications.

The generative AI boom of recent months, catalyzed by OpenAI‘s ChatGPT launch late last year, has made Nvidia Corp. a $1 trillion chipmaker and boosted expectations for semiconductor companies of all stripes.

“If you look at how much data is going to be generated in the next five, seven to 10 years, you need a lot of memory,” ASM Chief Executive Officer Benjamin Loh said in an interview in Seoul. “ChatGPT or generative AI needs eight times the memory of a normal Google search.”

Loh was in Seoul partly to lay the ground for the Almere-based company to ride the next big wave in the cyclical chip industry that is expected to come around 2025.

A major producer of atomic layer deposition equipment that’s crucial to produce advanced chips, ASM expects the chip market to recover starting next year and sales in 2025 to exceed those of 2022.

The firm is planning to invest around $100 million to expand its research operations and facility in South Korea and hire an additional 200 staff in the country within three to five years.

ASM, like its former affiliate and Dutch peer ASML Holding NV, is prevented from selling its most advanced chipmaking gear to China without government approval due to the restrictions on tech exports to China imposed by the US and its allies. 

The demand for emerging technologies is exemplified by the huge sales forecast from Nvidia, which supplies the best AI-training accelerators to power tools like ChatGPT. As a key machinery provider to Nvidia’s primary contract manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., ASM has seen its shares gain more than 70% since the beginning of this year.

Loh upheld ASM’s previous guidance that the company will see limited impact from the China chip curbs, with no more than 4% of its total sales being affected.

“It’s not a big deal. We cannot sell the most advanced type of equipment but a lot of other equipment is still not restricted and we can continue” that trade with Chinese customers, the executive said. There will be other buyers for its premium products as long as chip demand continues to grow, he added.

Loh said that some countries will now work with only select partners to mitigate supply disruptions in the future, but the chip supply chain remains highly globalized and it will be difficult for China and the US to completely decouple.

Any country attempting to be completely self-sufficient would find that task “very, very difficult.”

In recent days, American officials have also toned down their language on China — following the imposition of the chip curbs and a controversy around an alleged Chinese spy balloon — as part of their efforts to improve ties between the world’s two largest economies. In late April, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the Biden administration is seeking to derisk, but not decouple, from China.