Tech firms cannibalize washing machines for chips amid shortage

Tech firms are buying brand‑new washing machines and gutting them for chips. The move reflects a desperate scramble to keep production lines moving while the world wrestles with a multi‑year semiconductor deficit.

Dutch chip‑equipment maker ASML disclosed that a major, unnamed customer – believed to be an automotive supplier – has begun purchasing thousands of new washers to harvest the sensors, Wi‑Fi modules and display controllers inside them. The practice surfaced after ASML’s first‑quarter earnings call in early April, when CEO Peter Wennink warned investors that demand for its lithography tools now stretches well beyond traditional chip‑makers.^12345678

The shortage that drove firms to the laundry room

The shortage began when lockdowns pushed families to replace laptops, phones and home entertainment gear. That surge doubled demand for silicon across consumer, automotive and industrial sectors. Building a new fab still costs billions of pounds and takes roughly two years, a timeline that cannot keep pace with the current order backlog.⁸

Carmakers such as Tesla and Ford have seen production grind to a halt because the chips that once cost a pound now sit behind a year‑long queue. The ripple effect reaches appliance brands like Bosch and Hotpoint and even console makers Sony and Microsoft, all of which rely on the same high‑volume logic and sensor parts.⁸

What you actually pull from a modern washer

A contemporary washing machine is a miniature IoT hub. It houses a touchscreen display, Wi‑Fi radio, load‑weight sensor and fault‑detection controller. Each component is a packaged semiconductor that could also live in a smart thermostat or a connected speaker.⁸

Stuart Miles, founder of Pocket‑lint, called the tactic “good old scavenger tactics.”⁸ He said procurement teams are now ripping out the sensors that once lived in a car’s infotainment system and swapping them for the same part harvested from a washer’s display board. The irony, Miles noted, is that engineers are literally cleaning laundry while hunting for the chips that power it.⁸

Automakers and the price of a stalled car

When a vehicle worth £100,000 sits idle because a single sensor cannot be sourced, the loss is immediate and visible. Cars consume about 15 % of all chips produced, a share that magnifies any supply shock. The shortage has already pushed new‑car deliveries below 2019 levels despite higher consumer demand.⁸

The financial hit is not limited to lost sales. Factories must keep workers on payroll, and suppliers face penalties for missing delivery windows. By extracting chips from washers, firms hope to shave weeks off the wait for a component that would otherwise require a six‑month order lead time.⁸

ASML’s warning and the supply chain’s blind spot

ASML’s machines that print circuit patterns on silicon wafers dominate the market for the most advanced nodes. The company enjoys a near‑monopoly on equipment capable of etching sub‑10‑nanometer features. Yet even ASML cannot accelerate capacity fast enough; customers now face a year‑long queue for new lithography tools.²

Wennink told investors that the “width of the demand” has been vastly underestimated, pointing to the explosion of IoT devices that embed chips in everything from dog collars to kitchen appliances. The washing‑machine hack underscores a systemic blind spot: the supply chain was built for a world where chips lived mainly in PCs, not in every household appliance.¹³⁴⁵⁶⁷

What to watch

The next quarterly earnings from ASML will reveal whether the company can expand capacity fast enough to ease the pressure. Keep an eye on any official statements from major automakers about alternative sourcing strategies. If the washer‑cannibalism trend spreads, we may see a new class of “chip‑recovery” startups emerge, turning discarded appliances into a secondary supply node for the semiconductor ecosystem.