China's memory-chip champion just became the country's most valuable listed company, and its rise is forcing a reckoning between the world's largest tech buyer and the US semiconductor industry.
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CXMT surges 465% in $484B debut as Apple-Micron chip battle heats up
China's memory-chip champion just became the country's most valuable listed company, and its rise is forcing a reckoning between the world's largest tech buyer and the US semiconductor industry.
CXMT (688825.SH) surged 465.82% on its first day of trading in Shanghai, closing with a market capitalization of about $484 billion — surpassing Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to become the most valuable company listed on mainland Chinese exchanges. The company raised at least $8.55 billion in its initial public offering, Asia's largest this year.
"The market is pricing in a structural shift in memory supply," said Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities. "CXMT has proven it can produce DRAM good enough for consumer electronics and AI data centers, and that changes the competitive dynamics."
The rally reflects a dramatic reversal of fortune for the Hefei-based chipmaker. In the first quarter, CXMT posted revenue of $7.5 billion, up from less than $1 billion a year earlier — a 719% surge. Net profit reached $3.66 billion as the global memory shortage gave the company unprecedented pricing power. Research firm SemiAnalysis estimates CXMT will capture 12% of the global DRAM market by next year, up from about 9% in 2025, cementing its position as the No. 4 player behind Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.
The IPO comes as CXMT finds itself at the center of a lobbying battle between Apple and Micron that could reshape the $200 billion-plus memory industry. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and senior executives have held discussions with President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, seeking permission to use CXMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) memory chips in Apple products sold outside the US, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple argues the move would ease a global memory shortage that has forced it to raise MacBook and iPad prices by about 20% — a situation Cook described as a "100-year flood."
Micron has pushed back aggressively. Chief Executive Sanjay Mehrotra warned the Trump administration that allowing Chinese memory suppliers into US tech supply chains could hollow out the domestic industry, comparing the risk to the decline of US steel and manufacturing. Micron, which has announced plans to invest more than $250 billion in US production by 2035, argues that today's high prices reflect genuine scarcity after years of underinvestment driven by customer price pressure.
The Pricing Power Shift
CXMT's newfound market power is visible in its pricing. The company now charges more than Samsung's roughly $1,240 per unit for comparable 64-gigabyte DDR5 server memory modules, according to people familiar with the matter. Several Chinese electronics firms complained to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology this year about CXMT and YMTC price increases, blaming the hikes for delaying product launches.
The company has signed major supply deals with Chinese tech giants, including a five-year agreement with ByteDance worth more than $7 billion and a deal with Tencent valued at over $3 billion. Chinese authorities have asked CXMT and YMTC to prioritize domestic customers, limiting near-term capacity for potential export customers like Apple.
CXMT is building two new fabrication plants in Shanghai and Hefei and is in talks about a third, which would more than double its monthly production capacity to over 600,000 wafers. If the expansion proceeds on schedule, CXMT's capacity would overtake Micron's by 2030, one person familiar with the plans said.
The HBM Gap and Geopolitical Risk
Despite its rapid ascent, CXMT faces significant constraints. The company cannot produce high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the ultrafast chips used in Nvidia's AI accelerators that generate the highest margins for memory makers. CXMT remains two generations behind industry leaders in HBM, and its conventional DRAM chips are produced using older deep ultraviolet lithography machines from ASML, rather than the extreme ultraviolet tools used by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.
"If more restrictions are imposed on lithography equipment, that would be the biggest challenge for Chinese memory makers," said Ray Wang, an analyst at SemiAnalysis. "China remains quite behind in that part of the equipment supply chain."
The US government approved CXMT for addition to the Commerce Department's Entity List last year, but officials have held off on implementing the designation. Apple has sought assurances that CXMT won't be blacklisted, according to people familiar with the discussions. YMTC is already on the list, restricting its access to US-origin equipment and software.
For investors, the key question is whether CXMT's conventional DRAM pricing power can persist as capacity expands, and whether the company can close the technology gap in HBM before export controls tighten further. Micron shares, trading at elevated multiples on the strength of its AI memory business, face limited direct risk from CXMT's rise in commodity DRAM — but the long-term trajectory points to a market with four strong players instead of three.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
[1] Maker of Chips Sought by Apple Soars to No. 1 in China Stock Market - WSJ[2] Donald Trump faces competing pressure from Apple and Micron over Chinese memory chips: Report[3] How the 'twin stars' of China, CXMT and YMTC, changed the chip game[4] Trump's Dilemma: Apple's Chinese Chips vs Micron's Domestic Push - 조선일보[5] Apple’s Fight With Micron Just Took a Wild Turn — And It Could Reshape the Memory Market - 24/7 Wall St.
