In the evening of March 3, SMIC issued a statement, disclosing that based on the volume purchase agreement, it had signed a purchase order with the ASML Group for purchases of ASML products for wafer production in the last 12 months. The total price of the order was about 1.2 billion US dollars. SMIC gave a 30% down payment after issuing the purchase order, and will complete the rest of the payment upon delivery.
Since December 18 of last year, SMIC has become one of the firms put on the U.S. Entity List that requires American firms to obtain a license before exporting products or technologies to those firms on the list. Reports on March 1 of this year indicated that the U.S. equipment firms have already obtained their licenses to supply SMIC with the equipment for manufacturing 14nm and more advanced products.