How many views did “The World's Most Important Machine” get?

Veritasium · published 2025-12-31 · TubeCount #53, played 2026-08-03

Why this one

Veritasium's typical video does 8–10 million views, drawn from a science audience that has been loyal for over a decade. A video about semiconductor fabrication — the ASML extreme ultraviolet machine that makes every modern chip — hit 31 million. The ceiling is not the loyal science audience: it is every person who had just learned that one Dutch company was the chokepoint for all global computing. When the subject of a video becomes geopolitically urgent, the algorithm routes traffic from people who would never otherwise seek out a science channel. Derek Muller made the right video in the right news cycle, and the news cycle tripled his usual reach.

How everyone did

15 players called this one. The average score was 34 out of 100, and on the thumbnail alone people were typically 13× off.