China's chip champion

China’s AI race has largely revolved around names like Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent. Today, a new contender stole the spotlight.

Memory chip maker CXMT soared 466% in its Shanghai STAR Market debut after raising $8.6 billion, making it the most valuable company listed in mainland China. If you haven’t heard of CXMT before today, you’ll be hearing about it a lot more in the future: It’s now the world’s fourth-largest DRAM maker with a 7.67% market share as of last year, and it grew first-quarter revenue from less than $1 billion a year ago to $7.5 billion this year.

Memory wars

CMXT is steadily gaining ground in a memory chip race long dominated by Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix. Investors are already taking notice: Today Micron fell 2.25% and SK Hynix dropped 7.47%. It was another blow to an AI trade that’s been running out of steam, and the selloff quickly spread to other tech heavyweights like Sandisk (down 11.02% today) and Seagate (down 4.07%)

Last year, CXMT accounted for 9% of global DRAM bit shipments, and SemiAnalysis expects that number to reach 12% by 2027. Apple could provide another tailwind: The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is seeking the Trump administration’s approval to use CXMT and other Chinese memory chips in devices sold outside the US, a move that would diversify its supply chain as memory costs continue to weigh on margins. Micron, of course, has urged the administration to reject the proposal, warning that it could do to the US chip industry what Chinese competition did to American steel and manufacturing.

That said, CXMT still has ground to make up. Even after its blockbuster debut, the company’s roughly $484 billion market cap remains well below the industry’s heavyweights, with Samsung and Micron each worth around $1 trillion.

China’s IPO pipeline

CXMT may be the first of several blockbuster Chinese tech listings on the docket. NAND memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies is reportedly preparing a Shanghai IPO this year while internally targeting a roughly $148 billion valuation, according to Reuters. Then there’s DeepSeek, which has been linked to a potential IPO next year after reportedly reaching a valuation north of $50 billion.

But China’s AI ambitions go well beyond the IPO market. The country is now building its own immersion deep-ultraviolet lithography machines, a critical piece of equipment used to manufacture cutting-edge chips. The development knocked ASML, the longtime leader in the technology, down 5.8% today, while Nvidia fell 4.99%.

One thing is becoming increasingly clear: As Chinese companies quickly catch up to their US counterparts, the AI trade may never be the same.—SY