Chinese chipmaker CXMT soars 500% on debut as AI fuels shortages
Published On 28 Jul, 2026
The race to build data centres that power artificial intelligence has fuelled a global memory chip shortage while causing business to boom for the companies that produce them.
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is the world’s fourth-largest maker of DRAM memory chips, with around eight percent market share.
It wants to rival South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, and US giant Micron, companies that have also seen profits and share prices skyrocket in recent months.
The firm’s shares rocketed 530 percent Monday, taking its market capitalisation to 3.65 trillion yuan ($540 billion) — surpassing megabank ICBC as mainland China’s most valuable company.
The interest “reflects investors’ overwhelmingly bullish sentiment toward China’s flagship domestic memory chip firm”, Larry Yang, chief economist of First Seafront Fund Management, told AFP.
China’s government is increasingly counting on homegrown hardware to boost its position in the AI race against the United States.
Going public allows CXMT to secure capital that will “lay a solid foundation” for expanding production capacity and spending on chip development, Yang said.
“Meanwhile, it will boost the company’s global influence and help lift its market share in the worldwide memory chip sector.”
That view was shared by Zhang Guobin, founder of Chinese specialist website eetrend.com.
He called the initial public offering a “turning point in the global storage industry landscape and the development trajectory of China’s semiconductor sector”.
