In early 2024 the company said it would raise its employees' starting salaries by 40% to secure talent and compete with the payrates of foreign companies.[28] In February 2024, Tokyo Electron's market cap closed at US$114.6 billion, making it the third-most valuable company in Japan in terms of market cap, beating Sony Group.
So one of the devices this company makes is used to apply coating to silicon wafers before they can be etched. The coating must be uniform, so the wafers are spun at 3,000 rpm while a drop of coating is placed in the middle. But that's not all, because if the drop of coating is too large you'll get excess coating flying around inside, causing it to settle non-uniformly on the wafer. So Tokyo Electron put suction valves at the top of the device and they suck out all the excess coating. You try designing a similar device without infringing their patents. Yeah, that's what I thought