Business
JSR, Now Government Property, Embeds in TSMC's Backyard
JSR's Inpria unit holds the only publicly disclosed commercial qualification for high-NA EUV metal oxide resist. A joint venture formed in April embeds that chemistry inside TSMC's development cycle; the ministry that paid ¥909 billion for JSR in 2024 controls when it arrives.
JSR formed a Taiwan photoresist joint venture in April, two years after Japan's government paid ¥909 billion to take the company private.
The venture pairs JSR with Wah Lee Industrial and LCY Chemical. TrendForce reported the investment as tens of millions of dollars; JSR has not disclosed the capex split. Production targets 2028, and TSMC requested the local arrangement, citing co-development cycles slowed by shipping from Japan and Belgium.
Japan Investment Corporation completed its tender offer in April 2024 at ¥4,350 per share. JSR delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange in June 2024, holding roughly a quarter of the global photoresist market. The Korea plant and the Taiwan JV are both state-authorized capital decisions.
Who Controls the Supply
JSR's claim to a specific role at TSMC's leading edge runs through Inpria, a Portland company it acquired for $514 million in 2021. Inpria's tin-oxide metal oxide resist absorbs EUV photons roughly five times more efficiently than organic chemically amplified resists, with molecular building blocks five times smaller.
JSR's Korean unit is building the world's first production-scale MOR facility, in Cheongju, set to begin mass production in 2026. Inpria's chemistry is the only type with a publicly disclosed commercial qualification for high-NA EUV.
JSR, Tokyo Ohka Kogyo, and Shin-Etsu Chemical together account for roughly 85% of global EUV photoresist production. Japanese suppliers collectively hold approximately 95% of high-end EUV resists at nodes below 7nm. Tokyo Ohka Kogyo and Shin-Etsu Chemical run competing high-NA programs but have not disclosed MOR qualification milestones.
Supply Constraints and Price Signals
The global EUV photoresist market reached $296 million in 2024, growing at roughly 25% annually. EUV resist volumes grew 38% in 2025, tracking scanner utilization that climbed from 18,000 to 25,500 wafer hours per tool between 2022 and 2024.
Per-liter contract pricing is set through multiyear supply agreements and not publicly disclosed. Proxies point upward. Japan imposed tariffs of up to 25% on 19 semiconductor material categories in October 2025.
METI placed high-end EUV resists on its export control list in November 2025, restricting supply to 42 Chinese entities. Shin-Etsu's exports to China fell 42% month-on-month in November. Buyers whose supply contracts predate October 2025 operate under a different cost floor than those negotiating now.
China's domestic EUV resist supply sat below 5% in late 2025 against a state-mandated 40%-by-2026 target, according to TrendForce. Japanese suppliers hold 85% of production. The METI export-control list was the predictable policy response, the same pressure that produced Order No. 834.
The April 2024 nationalization reframes what the METI export-control list represents. The ministry that paid ¥909 billion for JSR's parent is the same one that added high-end EUV resists to the restricted list seven months later. For chipmakers outside long-term supply agreements, the counterparty behind every MOR contract is now a government.
SK hynix began co-developing MOR with Inpria in August 2022, the longest-standing MOR partnership in the supply chain. It installed a high-NA EUV scanner in September 2025, the first memory maker to do so. Whether the Cheongju plant's 2026 supply run clears SK hynix's 1c DRAM qualification window before Samsung takes the same chemistry slot is the test.