CXMT IPO Puts It on Trajectory toward Global DRAM Leaders
By Reuters | 14 Jul, 2026

China's quest to take the global AI crown finds a champion in a spectacular surge by its leading maker of high-bandwidth memory chips for AI.

China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) expects to raise about 57.9 billion yuan ($8.55 billion) before any over-allotment option in its initial public offering on Shanghai's Nasdaq-style STAR Market, the company said in a filing.

The company said the IPO price was set at 8.66 yuan per share.  ($1 = 6.7697 Chinese yuan renminbi)

The Hefei-based company has become China's largest DRAM manufacturer and is cementing its status with its debut on the Shanghai exchange.   The numbers behind the listing suggest the global memory hierarchy long ruled by Samsung, SK Hynix, and America's Micron Technology is no longer untouchable.

A Landmark Listing

CXMT opens subscriptions on July 16 for a STAR Market offering designed to raise at least 29.5 billion yuan (about $4.3 billion), a figure that could hit $8.55 billion if over-allotment options are exercised.  That would make it mainland China's largest IPO since CNOOC's 2022 return and the second-biggest listing in STAR Market history, behind only foundry champion SMIC. Some analysts believe the company could ultimately command a market value approaching 3 trillion yuan, which would place it among China's most valuable technology firms.

The timing is no accident. Beijing is steering capital toward strategically vital chipmakers just as AI data centers ignite a historic memory supercycle, with DRAM contract prices roughly doubling year-over-year in early 2026.

Explosive Growth, Sudden Profitability

CXMT's financial transformation has been remarkable. Full-year 2025 revenue reached 61.8 billion yuan (roughly $9.1 billion), up more than 150 percent, delivering the company's first annual profit after nearly a decade of losses. Then came the vertical climb: first-quarter 2026 revenue of 50.8 billion yuan, a 719 percent year-over-year surge, with net profit up nearly 1,700 percent. The company projects first-half 2026 revenue of 110 to 120 billion yuan and profit of 50 to 57 billion yuan — enough to wipe out every loss accumulated since its 2016 founding in a single six-month stretch.

Measuring Up to Micron

How does that stack up against Silicon Valley's memory standard-bearer? Micron, the only US-based memory manufacturer, posted $37.4 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2025 with $8.5 billion in net income. On a rough currency-adjusted basis, CXMT's first-quarter revenue now runs about one-third of Micron's and one-fifth of SK Hynix's — a gap, certainly, but a shrinking one for a company that barely registered on market-share charts two years ago.

Omdia data shows CXMT's slice of global DRAM sales jumping from under 4 percent in mid-2025 to 7.67 percent by year-end, ranking fourth worldwide, and topping 8 percent in early 2026. The big three still control over 90 percent of the market, but CXMT is targeting nearly 20 percent by 2030, backed by plans to double wafer capacity from roughly 300,000 to 600,000 wafers per month as new Shanghai fabs come online.

The Technology Ladder

CXMT built its beachhead in legacy DDR4 memory, filling the vacuum left as incumbents pivoted capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators. It has since climbed upmarket: its DDR5 server memory has cleared customer validation and is taking orders from Tencent and ByteDance, while its portfolio spans LPDDR5X and enterprise-grade products serving Alibaba Cloud, Lenovo, and Xiaomi. Apple is even reportedly testing CXMT DRAM for China-market iPhones. The frontier remains HBM, where analysts estimate CXMT trails Samsung and SK Hynix by two to three years — the same catch-up arc it has already run in commodity DRAM.

The Road Ahead

Real obstacles remain. Overseas sales account for under 3 percent of revenue, its top five customers supply roughly two-thirds of sales, and US export controls loom over its equipment supply chain and global ambitions. But with billions in fresh capital earmarked for capacity expansion and next-generation DRAM research, CXMT's IPO marks the moment China's memory champion stopped chasing the leaders' taillights and entered their mirrors.

(Reporting by Beijing NewsroomEditing by David Goodman with additional reporting and editing by Goldsea Staff)