SINGAPORE -- Memory-chip maker CXMT soared in its stock-market debut to become the most valuable company listed in mainland China, capping the rise of an upstart whose products are sought by Apple.
The company, founded just a decade ago, sported a market capitalization equivalent to $484 billion after its opening day of trading in Shanghai, topping Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to become the most valuable company listed in a mainland Chinese market. CXMT's market value was just short of China-based internet company Tencent, which is listed in Hong Kong and is the most valuable company in that market.
CXMT is China's national champion in the fast-growing business for memory chips dominated until now by three companies: SK Hynix and Samsung of South Korea and Micron Technology of the U.S.
Prices of dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, have skyrocketed owing to high demand from artificial-intelligence companies. With chips in short supply, manufacturers are raising prices on everything from iPhones and computers to cars.
Concerned about losing sales to price-conscious consumers, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and top executives have pitched President Trump and other U.S. officials on a plan to use CXMT and other Chinese chips in Apple products sold outside the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported. Apple is clashing with Micron, which says letting CXMT sell to U.S. tech companies would hurt U.S. industry.
The exuberant investor response to CXMT's initial public offering in Shanghai reflected the company's torrid growth in recent quarters.
In the first quarter of this year, CXMT's revenue rose to $7.5 billion from less than $1 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. Profit rose to $3.66 billion as the memory-chip shortage allowed the company to secure generous price increases from customers.
Research firm SemiAnalysis predicts that CXMT's global share will grow to 12% by next year, up from an estimated 9% in 2025, cementing its No. 4 position behind the big three. While CXMT acknowledged in its IPO prospectus that its products still trailed those of industry leaders -- in part because U.S. export controls prevent it from acquiring top-of-the-line Western chip-making equipment -- its chips are good enough to have achieved wide use in consumer electronics and AI data centers.
CXMT is raising at least $8.55 billion in its IPO. It said it would use the money to upgrade production lines and technology.
Right behind it is another chip maker called Yangtze Memory Technologies, or YMTC. It makes a type of chip called NAND flash memory which is used for storage such as keeping photos on a phone.
YMTC is planning its own share offering in Shanghai as soon as this year. It is building three new factories in China that would more than double its current capacity by the end of 2027, the Journal has reported.
CXMT said in its prospectus that its production capacity still fell short of demand within China. Earlier this year, Beijing told Chinese memory-chip makers including CXMT to give priority to local buyers.
That suggests CXMT and YMTC might not have much capacity available for Apple, although the two companies would likely welcome adding Apple to their customer lists as an endorsement of their products.
"Given the persistent global memory imbalance, even if Apple's lobbying succeeds and it buys DRAM from CXMT, that would not materially lower costs or fill the supply gap," Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst with TF International Securities, wrote in a note. Still, he said, "Apple has every reason to secure an additional source."
China's government, hoping to free the country from dependence on technology from the U.S. and American allies in Asia, has backed CXMT with money from a national chip investment fund. The eastern city of Hefei, where the company is based, also invested.
Beijing has pushed CXMT and other domestic chip makers to use domestic equipment. Lacking state-of-the-art foreign machinery, CXMT has adopted a technique called multi-patterning to squeeze more circuitry onto a single wafer. And it invested in advanced packaging technology, stacking circuitry in unconventional ways to boost performance.
Analysts said the techniques increased the risk of errors and reduced the yield -- the percentage of usable chips on a wafer. SemiAnalysis says CXMT's yields have improved but remain below industry standards.
Beyond making conventional DRAM chips, CXMT is also leading a state project to develop high-bandwidth memory, a pricey component used in AI chips and data centers. The U.S. has restricted the export to China of some advanced HBM chips made by the three big memory-chip companies.
CXMT is testing a sample of HBM3 -- the same generation SK Hynix started making four years ago -- and aims to start trial production by the end of this year, people familiar with the matter said.
Write to Raffaele Huang at raffaele.huang@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 27, 2026 03:28 ET (07:28 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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