On the evening of December 30, Chinese DRAM leader ChangXin Memory Technologies Group Co., Ltd. (CXMT) formally submitted its prospectus to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, applying for a listing on the…
On the evening of December 30, Chinese DRAM leader ChangXin Memory Technologies Group Co., Ltd. (CXMT) formally submitted its prospectus to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, applying for a listing on the STAR Market. The offering is being sponsored by state-backed investment bank CICC and Chinese securities firm CSC Financial.
CXMT plans to raise up to CNY 29.5 billion, equivalent to approximately USD 4.22 billion, with proceeds earmarked for three core projects: upgrading mass-production DRAM wafer manufacturing lines, advancing DRAM process technologies, and funding forward-looking research and development for next-generation dynamic random-access memory.
The company said its current capacity already ranks first in China and fourth globally, but still lags the world's top three DRAM makers. With China remaining the world's largest DRAM consumption market, CXMT said the planned investments will accelerate process upgrades, reduce unit costs, enhance profitability, and better meet strong downstream demand, helping the company secure a more favorable position in the global DRAM market.
Founded in 2016, CXMT was established against the backdrop of heavy global DRAM concentration, with more than 90% of the market long dominated by Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology. CXMT said it has since broken through key DRAM technologies and achieved independent design, development, and commercial mass production, filling a long-standing gap in mainland China's DRAM industry.
Today, CXMT is China's largest and most technologically advanced integrated DRAM manufacturer, operating under an IDM model that spans R&D, design, and fabrication. Its product portfolio covers DDR and LPDDR families, including DDR4, DDR5, LPDDR4X, and LPDDR5/5X, serving applications such as servers, mobile devices, PCs, smart vehicles, and AI-related systems.
Read the original article
Comments
Would love to see them succeed and take on the pc builder market, aka hobbyist market. Honestly, the recent rise in RAM left me behind with a huge amount of disbelief and anger. Anger primarily, because big corporations are responsible for draining the market, while on the other hand a Satya Nadella states that they are sitting on a pile of GPUs they cannot use because of limited power.[1]
I simply cannot understand how that will ever be profitable. To me, it just looks like a huge waste of resources.
[1]: https://redmondmag.com/blogs/generationai/2025/12/microsoft-...
By KronisLV 2026-01-0412:23 Same with Chinese GPUs: https://videocardz.com/newz/chinas-lisuan-begins-shipping-6n...
Sure those particular ones are still using TSMC but at least people are doing something to prevent everything from being such oligopolies: which is also why I own an Intel Arc A580 and B580.
Any step towards market competition is nice to hear about.
By heavyset_go 2026-01-044:184 reply I'd love to see it, but they'll be given the BYU/Huawei/etc treatment to keep the silicon cartel's margins from crashing.
By checker659 2026-01-045:011 reply The world exists outside the US too you know.
By heavyset_go 2026-01-045:054 reply Plenty of countries gave Huawei the same treatment the US did, and the US and its allies have the weight to impose sanctions, tariffs, etc to punish consumers within their borders for daring to consider better and cheaper options.
By TitaRusell 2026-01-0414:10 There's a difference between cutting off a phone from Google apps and a memory stick. Huawei phones became basically useless for every day use.
With RAM you can always just AliExpress it. I live in a small country yet every day literally MILLIONS of packages come in from Asia.
The allies of the US all banned Huawei because the US asked them (quite forcefully) to do so.
CXMT is already under a full set of US long arm sanctions so probably only very little of their products will ever reach western markets.
However some Chinese demand will definitely be met by CXMTs product displacing western suppliers - so maybe there is a tiny bit of relief for western consumers there.
By WarOnPrivacy 2026-01-047:563 reply > However some Chinese demand will definitely be met by CXMTs product displacing western suppliers - so maybe there is a tiny bit of relief for western consumers there.
I recall years of hints that the affordable housing crunch would eventually be helped by developers - even tho they're only building tons of not-affordable housing.
We're five years in. No meaningful change is visible from the perspective of folks who need affordable housing.
Based on that lesson, I expect what CXMT does there to have no meaningful effect here.
By mgh95 2026-01-048:51 > I recall years of hints that the affordable housing crunch would eventually be helped by developers - even tho they're only building tons of not-affordable housing.
If I may ask, what cities? For example, Austin has seen a 6.6% asking price decrease for 0- to 2-bedroom units [1]. The big problem is there is an absolutely massive hole, and very few places are building "enough" to make a dent.
[1] https://www.realtor.com/advice/hyperlocal/austin-rents-are-g...
By ahartmetz 2026-01-049:14 The RAM market is much more commoditized than housing. Almost any increase in supply should reduce prices world-wide.
By renewiltord 2026-01-048:54 How could a subsidized housing number increase from building not-subsidized housing? That is illogical. The market rate housing will become cheaper and therefore more housing will be affordable to more people but you can’t make the number of “affordable housing” units go up by building anything else because “affordable housing” is a brand name for subsidized housing.
Is that because CXMT is using stolen tech?
Downvoting doesn't answer my question though.
By chvid 2026-01-075:52 No - all advanced semiconductor production in China is under an elaborate set of US sanctions regardless of company.
By checker659 2026-01-046:222 reply Ok, but BYD is everywhere
By yetihehe 2026-01-0421:27 Chinese electric vehicles are unofficially banned in Polish army bases, probably in other countries too.
How much stolen tech does BYD use? Is that even a factor in not allowing them into the US?
By checker659 2026-01-0416:131 reply I don't know about that. All I'm pointing out is that just because US doesn't like China doesn't mean there isn't a bigger market out there. So, even if China ends up servicing that market only, that's still a big chunk of the pie. So, case in point, a Chinese DRAM maker flooding the market with cheap(er) DRAMs (or any DRAM for that matter -- thanks Micron), will end up affecting the price of DRAM in the US.
By mycall 2026-01-0418:11 That's true. The greater the numbers, the lower the demand on the global scale (unless those all be consumed by AI too). It makes me wonder if AI data centers will never be satisfied.
Yes, and? There are Huawei stores all over Asia, that little place where 60% of people live.
By heavyset_go 2026-01-049:55 Sucks for everyone else is what I'm saying. 100% of people should be allowed access, not be preempted from it in order to protect the value of exalted tech cartels.
By PixyMisa 2026-01-046:57 Doesn't matter given the current shortages.
If CXMT can fill more of China's domestic demand, that's still good news for us all.
By mensetmanusman 2026-01-0414:31 Doesn’t matter, more supply equals lower costs. Also, China can barely afford all of its states propping up the BYU supply chain with free cashflow.
By TiredOfLife 2026-01-0414:21 Are they known to supply Iran?
By babypuncher 2026-01-045:561 reply It's a colossal misallocation of resources by a handful of fucknuggets so wealthy that they will never experience real consequences for it. Meanwhile, everyone else is made to suffer.
By lenkite 2026-01-057:18 What's horrifying is that many of them are going to ask for bailouts in the future - using the reason of "national security".
This is a situation in which a government would typically step in and force companies to stop ratfucking end users in favor of business partners, but the problem here is that (a) it's an international problem that would require cooperation with China and (b) the US has the most venal administration in history and has already taken bribes from AI and hardware companies.
These companies going all in on purely AI partnership sales are foolish because the aforementioned user ratfucking is step two of Doctorow's original description of enshittification:
1. Attract users and partners with market disrupting quality of service
2. Screw over users in favor of partners, knowing that users are less likely to be critical and more likely to be locked in
3. Screw over partners once you've achieved enough market dominance that they are also locked in
4. Use rent seeking behavior (government bribes, etc.) now that you've exhausted your users and partners for growth
This is an announcement of increased competition in a market with acute supply shortages. That’s exactly what is supposed to happen.
Jumping to regulating the global RAM market this early sounds like the worst of all solutions. You want people to get cross-government approval every time they want to buy or sell RAM? American companies will call up Korea to get their RAM rations.
By anonymous908213 2026-01-046:101 reply Note that the company in question is specifically sanctioned by the US, so this is not exactly a glowing example of the utopia of the free market you seem to be holding it up as.
Rationing chips makes sense to me. You don't have to set the ration at a low enough level that it would ever impact legitimate businesses. You could just set a ration level that prevents a company that is losing hundreds of billions of dollars from spending imaginary money buying 40% of the annual raw material supply despite lacking the capability to refine the raw materials into a working product, for the sole purpose of denying it to their competition. You strawmanned the opposition as requiring cross-government approval "every time anyone wants to buy RAM", but maybe we could just start with requiring cross-government approval to buy 40% of the global supply.
By ZWoz 2026-01-0410:45 Seems like supporting argument against governmental regulation. In this specific case, against sanctions.
How do you expect this comment to be interpreted? I'm ruling out RAM as a social construct, I'm pretty sure it exists in the physical world.
By Neywiny 2026-01-0413:57 It actually kinda doesn't. I more meant around the GPUs where directly or otherwise Nvidia pays Microsoft, Microsoft pays Nvidia, both stocks go up by more than those amounts, profit.
But for RAM, Sam Altman didn't put in a purchase order for idk 10 trillion DIMMs or something. He said he would buy a bunch of wafers. A tweet had put it well: he said he'd buy wafers that don't yet exist for computers that don't exist for data centers that don't exist for AI models that don't exist for demand that doesn't exist.
So the demand is kinda made up the same way there were TP shortages at the height of covid. There's plenty enough to go around, but one person rocks the boat and everyone goes nuts.
By mensetmanusman 2026-01-0414:30 These situations usually lead to price collapse in the long run. Prices are simply an information vector on what humans should be doing for others globally.
By WhereIsTheTruth 2026-01-048:36 You'll never be able to buy their chips, the US will impose trade restrictions once it forces South Korea to ramp up production in US fabs
The entire price crisis stems from anticipation of that prospect
It’s essentially an economic death spiral, but that has a lot of energy and dynamism until it crashes. In this case as long as NVIDIA prints money and people are willing to play pretend for a paycheck, this will go on.
But it will end and who knows how many lives will be ruined in the fall.
By orangeboats 2026-01-047:36 Reading comprehension! The GP was clearly referring to the current AI boom, which is the root cause of DRAM price surging.
By walterbell 2026-01-0323:466 reply https://www.semiconsam.com/p/why-did-the-memory-chicken-game... | https://s-space.snu.ac.kr/bitstream/10371/95351/1/01%20Jeho%...
https://x.com/semianalysis_/status/2005458750296256654Chinese memory makers are the product of massive state backing, with tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and the full weight of the Chinese government behind them. Could Samsung win a power struggle against the Chinese government? .. The market that [Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron] created by surviving is completely different from the past. When there were ten players, even if I cut output, someone else could simply increase theirs. But now that only three remain, everyone knows all too well that if anyone recklessly expands supply, everyone goes down together.. the market paradigm has shifted from a “market share (M/S) war” to “profit maximization.”
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/samsung-engi...The key to (CXMT) achieving 10nm-class DRAM mass production at a speed that seemingly defies physics lies in its complete acquisition of Samsung’s PRP process roadmap—a project that took Samsung five years and 1.6 trillion KRW to develop.South Korean prosecutors indicted multiple individuals in a case alleging that a former Samsung engineer leaked advanced DRAM manufacturing process data to [CXMT] .. shedding light on how leaked trade secrets may have accelerated China’s push into 10nm-class memory.. engineers in question allegedly took note of detailed critical manufacturing steps in handwritten notes taken over five years.. handwritten notes remain difficult to track or audit. Investigators say the accused engineer exploited this gap by memorizing and transcribing process flows, which is virtually impossible to police effectively.By throwaway85825 2026-01-043:401 reply CXMT is Chinese backed whereas Korea is Samsung backed.
I see what you did there. LOL
Samsung closed the last Chinese smartphone factory in 2019 and moved South to Vietnam. In 2020, Samsung's Vietnam production accounted for about 25+% of the country's GDP and export.
By throwaway85825 2026-01-047:06 They don't call it the republic of Samsung for nothing.
Japanese companies are also nearshoring to vietnam.
This was mostly in the 80's during the cold war.
IMO, and it's not even really clear how Samsung's DRAM business really benefited from the state backing. The South Korea gov't first major initiative "Semiconductor Industry Promotion Plan" started only after Samsung'd developed their first 64K DRAM in 1983. It really helped other local industry competitors such as LG and Hyundai catch up, but Samsung was already on a roll -- by the early 90's, the company became the first to develop 256Mb DRAM. Not clear whether they really needed hand-holding from the gov't.
As mentioned in the sibling comment, Samsung practically owns S Korea. It's a fools errand to separate Samsung from the government.
By TiredOfLife 2026-01-0414:25 Even prisons in Korea are just vacation places for Samsung chairman.
By ahartmetz 2026-01-049:17 Don't entirely discount the other chaebol.
They still do. Where do you think comes a large part of Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta money?
By coliveira 2026-01-0420:46 The government leniency and support for oligarchy and way more important than the dollars they could provide. The current regime could be characterized as a techno surveillance state run by a few oligarchs.
By mittensc 2026-01-040:23 everything leaks eventually.
this wouldn't be such a problem if prices weren't so insane. Samsung would still have volume/know how/efficienciez.
By xzjis 2026-01-0411:16 As a free-software advocate, I believe competition should be based on investment in industrial machinery and labour, not on secretly guarded know-how. If Samsung, Micron, and SK-Electronics weren't an oligopoly trying to squeeze maximum profit out of consumers and instead offered good prices, China wouldn't be able to—and would have no interest in—subsidizing private companies to get them on the same level. It's only the greed of these three companies in their oligopoly that has put them in such a fragile position, where the slightest competition could be fatal to them.
By dmix 2026-01-044:33 IP is basically DOA if you’re competing with China
By walterbell 2026-01-040:18 Five years of memorized handwritten notes is a bit more old school corporate/state espionage than remote network breach, https://nationalpost.com/news/exclusive-did-huawei-bring-dow...
Security advisor Brian Shields discovered that not one, but seven Nortel executives, including CEO Frank Dunn, had been hacked, and that the hackers were vacuuming an alarming volume of sensitive material out of its databases. By the end of his investigation, Shields says he was able to track the theft of over 1,400 documents.. during a six-month period when bosses allowed him to monitor the stealing. He found evidence the break-in of Nortel’s internal computer network had started no later than 2000, and probably began in the 1990s. He says it lasted past 2009..By throw3836364 2026-01-041:501 reply Reminds me of when those European monks smuggled silkworms out of China.
By tooltalk 2026-01-046:10 too bad that there is nothing to steal from modern China.
By Johanx64 2026-01-041:33 >Could Samsung win a power struggle against the Chinese government?
Translation: Could Korean government win a power struggle against Chinese government
Since I'm in China, I took a look at Taobao hoping to find cheaper ddr5 sticks made with CXMT chips. Unfortunately, they are the same price or only marginally cheaper than Hynix sticks (1900 - 2300 rmb for 32g ddr5). Perhaps capacity at CXMT is not very high yet.
By ksec 2026-01-045:25 >Perhaps capacity at CXMT is not very high yet.
They failed to achieve quality and decent yield. And that is at least 10 years from DDR3 to DDR5. On the other hand YMTC from NAND space are moving to DRAM.
Or maybe CXMT is not dumb? If the worldwide price of some commodity is $100 and you can produce an item that is nearly as good as everyone else’s, would you sell it for $98 or for $50?
Or the supply of non-CXMT DRAM is sufficient poor right now that Chinese buyers, of which there are plenty, are willing to pay approximately as much for CXMT’s product as for anyone else’s?
CXMT’s real ability to reduce prices will come (if it does) by adding enough supply to drive down prices everywhere, or at least everywhere that is willing to import CXMT’s products without absurd tariffs.
By heavyset_go 2026-01-044:243 reply If they have the runway, they can try the tried and true method of undercutting competitors until they fold, and then capture the market for themselves.
Investors have the stomach for this tactic, surely a company with the state's backing can remain solvent even longer than those funded by private investors.
By amluto 2026-01-0422:02 I think the economics are wrong for this, at least so far. CXMT seems to be scaling up as fast as they can, and they have maybe 5% market share. They can’t flood the market with cheap DRAM because they don’t have enough DRAM yet — I’m not convinced they could materially impact anyone else’s profits even if they literally gave away their entire output. At best selling their product cheaply might help them gain some mindshare as integrators test it and hopefully discover that it meets the spec and works fine. What they need is capital and time with which to scale, and selling at a profit-maximizing price will get them the most capital, and this benefit may well exceed the actual profit on goods sold: the stock market might appreciate that they are profitable, thus making it easier for them to obtain funding under favorable terms.
If they actually want to try to destroy their competitors by undercutting them, they need to be able supply enough DRAM to actually drive down the price. At the rate that the big buyers are buying DRAM, that will take several more years at least.
I’m curious whether their presumed inability to buy ASML machines might actually help them. If they can meet the target DDR5 and HBM specs without EUV while maintaining decent yield and acceptable power consumption of the finished product, they may well be able to out-scale their competitors. I imagine it’s a lot easier to procure the equipment for additional DUV lines than EUV lines, especially with other Chinese vendors doing their best to supply semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
Other nations would likely step in before letting China corner the DRAM market
By walterbell 2026-01-0416:42 Ending memory "shortage" due to OMEC production cuts of NAND wafers. Everyone wins.
By ajsnigrutin 2026-01-053:36 RAM is cheap to make (well, relativly).
Undercutting the competitors is done when a business is working close to cost and a slight anomaly (eg. competitor that doesn't have to make profit, is subsidized or is cheaper for some artificial reason) makes them go out of business.
A stick of ram, made for $10, that used to cost $20 is now $100 due to the AI bubble (numbers pulled out of my ass)... you'd have to bring the prices down to $15 or even less to make those companies fold, but you can earn much more if you sell your ram at $80.
By walterbell 2026-01-041:401 reply That depends on whether your investor (China) also sells integrated products whose sales would increase if RAM were cheaper, e.g. smartphones or mini PCs with bundled LPDDR5, https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/your-laptop-is-abou...
Research and development in conventional computing are already suffering. Investment in efficient CPUs, affordable networking equipment, edge computing, and quantum-adjacent technologies has slowed as capital and talent are pulled into AI accelerators. This is precisely backward. Narrow AI — focused on real-world tasks like logistics, agriculture, port management, and manufacturing — is where genuine productivity gains lie. China understands this and is investing accordingly.Mini PCs seems to be the perfect vector, since the only serious manufacturers are Chinese brands. International brands only seem to dabble in this sector.
By walterbell 2026-01-042:011 reply If (SO)DIMM memory prices rise to the stratosphere while integrated memory in Chinese mini PCs remain relatively affordable, from 16GB Intel N150 to 128GB AMD Strix Halo for Edge AI, there will be industry-altering consequences that persist long after DRAM pseudo-shortages end. Oligopolists can relearn old lessons, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
New companies that serve low-value customers with poorly developed technology can improve that technology incrementally until it is good enough to quickly take market share from established business.Indeed. I am waiting to buy a Strix Halo on Taobao when supply has been replenished. I asked the manufacturer if price would remain the same after restocking, they said they weren't sure. They re-stock in the middle of January, so it will be interesting to see what the price ends up being. I wonder if there is any advantage of having integrated memory in this regard?
By walterbell 2026-01-0413:41 > any advantage of having integrated memory
Power efficiency. Strix Halo also offers unified CPU/GPU memory with 256 GB/s memory bandwidth, which brings it closer to Apple Silicon performance for local LLMs, https://chipsandcheese.com/p/strix-halos-memory-subsystem-ta...
Another opportunity is low-latency storage with millions of IOPS. Nvidia is rebooting Intel's cancelled (see eBay) Optane for "AI Storage". Future Mini PCs and LLM accelerators for Narrow/Edge AI industrial use could benefit from high-IOPS storage, https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/nvidia-and-kioxia...
I know there's more variety and typically lower prices (and sketchier windows licenses) from the Chinese brands, but last I looked, there's lots of options if you want an established brand. You can even get them from the likes of HP, Dell, Lenovo (still chinese, but), etc.
By walterbell 2026-01-0416:391 reply Is there an Intel N150 or Ryzen mini PC (NUC form factor) made by HP, Dell or Lenovo?
I think these have pretty high prices (as I acknowledged in my first message), but they exist. And I see similar things all over the place in retail and medical settings.
Here's a recent AMD processor one from Lenovo https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/desktops/thinkcentre/m-series...
Here'a a Dell with Intel. I can't decipher Intel's model numbers, but it's DDR5 so it can't be that old. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/cty/pdp/spd/dell-pro-qcm1250...
Why would I buy CXMT if it's virtually the same price as Hynix?
Edit: I see you made an edit without noting that you did so.
Only this sentence was in the pre-edit comment: "Or maybe CXMT is not dumb? If the worldwide price of some commodity is $100 and you can produce an item that is nearly as good as everyone else’s, would you sell it for $98 or for $50?"
For your added comments: There is no supply issue, there are hundreds of sellers of Hynix, Crucial, Samsung ddr5 on Taobao. For your second comment about them driving down prices later on by increasing supply, well, I first of all noted that perhaps capacity is not great in my comment, and you are also contradicting your first point where you said CXMT would be stupid to compete on price.
In reality, the history of every Chinese market entrant, even those leading technologically, shows that they always cut margins to compete by driving down costs. I have a decade worth of experience related to this.
I believe CXMT simply has not gotten to the stage where they really try to win market share and crank up supply - perhaps due to lack of capital, or as I said, due to capacity limitations (which may be a result of capital).
By eunos 2026-01-041:53 I'm not even sure most people know the difference. RAM is RAM for most people, that know and willing to buy RAM sticks on their own.
I'm watching the price refresh since last year, hoping the domestic manufacturers in China could rebalance the price a bit. Nope, it turned out that did not happen. It's a free money grab right now of course they raised their prices.
But I guess Americans will not be buying Chinese RAMs/SSDs for critical applications (such as AI), and not a lot of user outside China will use Chinese AI due to restrictions such as censorship etc being enforced on it, limiting the growth and scale of the tech. So, there is still hope that some of the manufacturers will eventually pivot towards tried and true consumer products.
By PixyMisa 2026-01-047:01 Like Nanya in Taiwan, DDR5 production at CXMT is in its early stages and a small fraction of their overall shipments. Give it a year and that will likely change.
