The CEO of a $282 billion chip machine producer takes one easy step to stay calm at the start of a big presentation

• ASML’s CEO advises people focus on breathing before a big presentation.
• Other executives, including Marc Benioff and Ray Dalio, have long evangelized about meditation.
• ASML, a key player in semiconductor manufacturing, is facing geopolitical challenges in China.

Dutch semiconductor giant ASML’s CEO has a simple piece of advice for anyone going into a big presentation: inhale and exhale.

“Watch the way you are going to breathe for the first 30 seconds,” Christophe Fouquet said on a Norges Bank podcast posted on Wednesday. “If you breathe too fast, then your presentation will go wrong very quickly.”

The CEO most recently spoke at a series of interviews at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January.

Fouquet highlighted some activities that help him avoid stress: listening to music, playing sports, and spending time with his kids.

Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio are among other executive-level advocates for mindfulness and meditation. Benioff has said that he starts each day by meditating for 30 to 60 minutes.

“I’m grateful to have learned how to meditate 30 years ago because I learned how to stop the inner critic,” Benioff wrote on X in 2019.

Dalio has called his meditation practice — which he started in 1969, even before founding his hedge fund — “the single most important reason for whatever success I’ve had.”

ASML, Europe’s second-largest tech company, is known for making large lithography machines needed to produce some high-end chips. Its biggest customers are chip manufacturers TSMC, Samsung, and Intel.

Fouquet, who has been the CEO since April 2024, is leading ASML through the artificial intelligence boom and a period plagued by uncertainty over geopolitical tensions between the US and China. He has worked at ASML since 2008.

The $282 billion company has been under pressure from the Dutch and US governments to further restrict sales of its technology to China — one of its biggest markets — over security concerns about AI and other technologies.

ASML’s shares are down nearly 20% in the past year, due to weakening demand from chipmakers.