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Changxin Memory makes DRAM memory chips—the fast working memory inside computers, phones, and servers—and sells them to device makers and data centers.
Changxin Memory Technologies is a Chinese chipmaker that builds DRAM, the fast short-term memory a computer uses while it is running. When you open a dozen browser tabs or a phone juggles apps, DRAM is what holds all that in place. CXMT designs and manufactures these chips and sells them to companies that build computers, smartphones, servers, and consumer devices.
The memory chip business is brutally cyclical and dominated by a handful of giants—Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology. CXMT is China's answer to that dominance: a homegrown supplier meant to reduce the country's reliance on imported memory. It is one of the very few companies anywhere that both designs and fabricates DRAM at scale, which is a capital-heavy, technically punishing thing to do. CXMT has pushed hard into advanced DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the specialized memory that feeds AI accelerators. That puts it on the front line of the US-China tech fight: Washington has targeted Chinese memory makers with export controls, and CXMT has landed on restricted-entity lists, limiting its access to some American tools and customers. Those restrictions are a real constraint on growth even as demand for memory and AI hardware surges.
Zhu Yiming had already built a chip company called GigaDevice. But he saw a bigger opening: China bought enormous amounts of memory chips every year and made almost none of them itself. So he went to the city of Hefei with a plan, and together they made a giant bet, eventually pledging 150 billion yuan to build China's own DRAM maker. The goal was to break into a market ruled by three giants: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.
Three years later, CXMT launched its own 8Gb DDR4 chip, designed and made in-house. That was the hard part: going from zero to one, and making real, sellable DRAM at scale. The company bet on a model where it controlled both the design and the factories, and aimed to leapfrog ahead rather than crawl behind.
For years, CXMT was a money furnace, burning cash every single year since it was founded. Then came 2025: AI demand exploded and the memory market went into a historic boom, just as CXMT's new factories came online. Revenue jumped 155.6 percent to about 62 billion yuan, and after losing about 37 billion yuan in total, the company finally posted its first full-year profit.
CXMT went public on Shanghai's STAR Market, and the stock went wild, surging 465.82 percent on day one. Its market value topped 3 trillion yuan, pushing it past Intel and making it the most valuable company on the Chinese market, ahead of the country's biggest bank. One stock traded 140 billion yuan in a single day, a record for a Chinese share.
The excitement cooled fast. The stock had already slid 32 percent from its August peak as investors questioned how long the AI boom could last. Then in October it dropped 7.79 percent in one day, the biggest fall since listing, erasing nearly 290 billion yuan of value. Analysts said this was investors cashing in and digesting sky-high prices, not a change in the business itself.
The business kept proving itself. Third-quarter revenue hit about 119 billion yuan, up 613 percent, with a net profit of over 54 billion yuan. Part of the reason: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron focused on pricier AI memory called HBM, leaving more room in ordinary DRAM for CXMT. But CXMT wanted that AI prize too, and planned to start limited HBM3E production, even with early yields of only 20 to 30 percent.
The company has been moving toward a public listing on Shanghai's STAR Market, a step that would give it fresh capital to keep building fabs—memory manufacturing is a constant race to spend billions on new capacity before rivals do. The bet is simple and expensive: China wants its own memory supply, and CXMT is the vehicle for that ambition, with all the opportunity and risk that entails.
Saved answer · last researched 30 Oct 2026