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In 1846, a 30 year old German mechanic named Carl Zeiss borrowed just 100 thalers roughly $70 in 1840s US silver dollars from his brother Eduard and opened a tiny workshop in Jena. He initially worked alone, repairing scientific instruments for the local university, selling spectacles, chemical balances and drawing equipment. A year later, he began manufacturing microscopes. 180 years later, the company he founded manufactures some of the most sophisticated mirrors ever made, and their production helps determine how many advanced semiconductor lithography machines ASML can deliver. But this extraordinary transformation didn't happen overnight. ZEISS worked with physicist Ernst Abbe and glassmaker Otto Schott to turn optical manufacturing into a science. Rather than limiting itself to products it had already mastered, the company kept pursuing harder problems, entering semiconductor lithography as early as in 1968 and eventually committing billions alongside ASML to developing EUV optics. Consider its latest High NA EUV mirrors. Some are approximately a metre across, weigh several hundred kilograms and take nearly a year to manufacture. Their curved surfaces must match a mathematically designed shape with astonishing accuracy. Engineers repeatedly grind, polish, measure and correct them, using ion beams to remove minute amounts of material. Then comes an extraordinary coating, more than 100 precisely engineered layers, including molybdenum and silicon, allowing the mirrors to reflect 13.5 nanometre ultraviolet light that ordinary mirrors largely absorb. Even measuring these surfaces required ZEISS and ASML to develop a purpose built 150 tonne machine. Inside ASML's scanners, the mirrors operate in vacuum, directing light to reproduce microscopic circuit patterns on silicon wafers. Today, Zeiss is ASML's sole supplier of critical optics, and ASML acknowledges that its production capacity depends partly on how quickly Zeiss can manufacture them. And here's what makes the story remarkable. A workshop started with 100 borrowed thalers has grown into a €11.9 billion annual revenue business, investing €1.73 billion a year in research. ZEISS didn't foresee the AI revolution. It spent generations pursuing optical challenges few could master, taking enormous technological and financial risks to push the limits of precision manufacturing. Now, as AI drives trillions of dollars into computing infrastructure and advanced semiconductors, those decades of innovation, risk taking and accumulated expertise are paying off on a scale its founders could scarcely have imagined.