Topics / Memory & HBM
Memory & HBM
Memory is where the AI build-out flipped the board. As Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron converted capacity to the high-bandwidth memory that AI accelerators need, ordinary DRAM went short and its price spiked, handing leverage to the one large maker with spare commodity capacity, the Chinese firm Washington had spent two years trying to keep down. China’s memory strength is concentrated in standard DRAM and NAND, through CXMT and YMTC, while it still depends on foreign suppliers at the high-bandwidth edge, and we track that contest with dates and sources.
The state of play
- The AI build-out inverted the memory market. Because an Nvidia Blackwell accelerator carries about 192 gigabytes of high-bandwidth memory, and HBM earns the makers several times more per wafer than ordinary memory, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron shifted capacity to HBM and left standard DRAM short. Contract prices for standard DRAM rose more than 90 percent in the first quarter of 2026, in what Goldman Sachs called the worst memory shortage in fifteen years (TrendForce; Goldman Sachs, via CAD, Jun 2026).
- CXMT, China’s largest domestic DRAM maker, was the winner the shortage created. It swung to a net profit of roughly 24.76 billion yuan (about 3.4 billion dollars) in the first quarter of 2026, more than its combined losses across 2023 and 2024, after losing about 5.98 billion yuan over the first nine months of 2025. It builds its own DDR4 and DDR5 around the incumbents’ patent walls and without EUV lithography, and sells DDR5 to Western brands at prices under Samsung and Micron (Huxiu; the-supplier, via CAD).
- On 27 July 2026 CXMT debuted on Shanghai’s STAR Market, opening up about 471 percent and reaching roughly 500 billion dollars by midday, passing ICBC to become the most valuable company on China’s mainland exchanges and the first semiconductor to top the A-share market in its 35-year history. Its 57.9 billion yuan raise is the largest mainland semiconductor IPO on record, and its global DRAM share had climbed from about 3.97 percent in mid-2025 to 7.67 percent by the end of 2025, the fourth-largest in the world (TechNode; TMTPost; Zhihu, via CAD).
- HBM is the gap that remains, and it is wider than one generation. CXMT sells no HBM at all: its disclosed range is DDR4, DDR5, LPDDR4X and LPDDR5/5X, its May 2026 listing filing funds 29.5 billion yuan of projects with no HBM line among them, and when the Shanghai exchange asked about HBM directly in December 2025 the company placed it among its competitors’ products rather than its own. Trade press and analysts report 16nm, 8-high HBM3 samples going to Huawei since the second half of 2025 at an overall yield SemiAnalysis put near 25 percent, with 12-layer HBM3E reported to be targeted for 2027, while Korea ships HBM3E and has moved on to HBM4. Where China is furthest along is standard DRAM and NAND: YMTC (Yangtze Memory, 长江存储), the domestic NAND-flash maker, filed for its own STAR Market listing in May 2026. Treat the HBM dates as reported, not a company roadmap disclosure.
- Leverage has visibly moved, but the cycle is the counter-risk. Apple lost about 275 billion dollars of market value in a day on a memory-driven price hike, then was reported to be lobbying Washington for clearance to keep buying DRAM from the blacklisted CXMT, which sits on the Pentagon’s 1260H list but not the Commerce Entity List, so the sales are legal. The caution is that the turnaround rests on a DRAM price spike that has always reversed: Goldman Sachs sees the shortage running through 2027 while Bloomberg Intelligence sees oversupply returning by 2028, and memory stocks sold off 40 to 50 percent from their highs in the month CXMT listed (Bloomberg; Financial Times; via CAD).
Best issues on this topic
- Xiaomi Shipped 26 Percent Fewer Phones While the Channel Stayed Full
Counterpoint has Chinese phone vendors shipping 1 percent fewer units in the second quarter than a year earlier, while sell-through, the count of handsets a person actually paid for, fell by double digits over the same three months. A person working in the sector told the Chinese outlet Dingjiao One that manufacturers expected memory to keep getting more expensive, bought components ahead of need and pushed more finished phones into the channel than the channel was moving, so part of the shipment figure measures warehouse space. Omdia put global second-quarter shipments down 6 percent, with Xiaomi down 26 percent, vivo 18 and OPPO 17. Counterpoint also has more than 40 percent of smartphone models worldwide taking a price increase during 2026 and global retail prices up about 15 percent on average, spread unevenly: India 21 percent, the Middle East and Africa 18, China 10, Europe 7, the United States 5. TrendForce tracked CPU, DRAM and SSD going from about 45 percent of a 900 dollar notebook bill of materials in the first quarter of 2025 to a projected 68 percent in the third quarter of 2026. Chinese memory makers are on the other side of the same trade: Counterpoint puts CXMT at 10 percent of global DRAM revenue in the second quarter, up from 4 percent a year ago, and YMTC at 14 percent of NAND revenue.
- Changxin Stopped Asking for Money
Changxin Technology, the listed parent of CXMT, filed first-half revenue of 150.31 billion yuan, up 873.64 percent, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 77.605 billion yuan against a 2.332 billion yuan loss in the same half of 2025. Gross margin was 84.74 percent, against 13.00 percent a year earlier. The line that decides what it means is the cash flow statement: operating activities threw off 131.156 billion yuan of net cash while financing contributed 1.002 billion, so the company covered a 35.577 billion yuan investing programme nearly four times over out of what it sold. Across all of 2025 it had taken 46.121 billion yuan net from financing.
- Financed at Home
CXMT’s over-allotment option was exercised in full without the bookrunner spending any of it, because the stock never traded below its 8.66 yuan issue price during the window, taking the raise to 66.607 billion yuan gross, about 9.9 billion dollars. YMTC’s 33 billion yuan Shanghai application was accepted on 24 August, and Enflame set 2 September for subscription against a 6 billion yuan target. That is 105.6 billion yuan asked of China’s domestic equity market for DRAM, NAND and AI silicon inside roughly five weeks. CXMT’s first quarter of 2026 alone earned 24.76 billion yuan on 50.80 billion of revenue, at a 79.2 percent gross margin.
- The Coronation
CXMT opened its Shanghai debut up 471 percent and reached about 500 billion dollars by midday, passing ICBC to become the most valuable company on China’s mainland exchanges, the first semiconductor to top the A-share market in its 35-year history.
- The Allotment
Nine and a half million retail households piled into CXMT’s STAR Market IPO at a record 0.4714 percent win-rate, and DeepSeek’s Liang Wenfeng took the single largest private-fund allocation in China’s biggest chip listing since SMIC.
- The Windfall
A Chinese memory middleman’s half-year profit jumped 743x. AI’s appetite for HBM is being paid for one layer down, by the budget phone in your pocket.
- The Toll Booth
CXMT signed a 2.94 billion dollar long-term DRAM deal with Tencent, one of the largest domestic chip-procurement commitments in years, ahead of its Shanghai listing.
- The Supplier
An interagency committee cleared CXMT for the US Entity List, but Commerce has not updated it since October 2025, the longest pause in a decade, because the two sides are mid-negotiation.
- Two Memory Markets
CXMT, China’s first domestic DRAM maker, cleared its STAR Market listing review, aiming to raise about 29.5 billion yuan for DRAM upgrades and next-generation DRAM research by building its own process around the incumbents’ patent walls.
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Common questions
Why did AI make memory so scarce?
Because AI accelerators are memory-hungry. An Nvidia Blackwell carries about 192 gigabytes of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and HBM earns the makers several times more per wafer than ordinary memory, so Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron converted capacity to HBM and left the standard-DRAM market short. Contract prices for standard DRAM rose more than 90 percent in early 2026, in what Goldman Sachs called the worst shortage in fifteen years, which handed leverage to whoever still had spare commodity capacity.
What is CXMT and why does it matter for AI?
CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies, 长鑫存储) is China’s largest domestic maker of DRAM, the standard working memory in phones, laptops and servers. It matters because the shortage turned that ordinary product into leverage: CXMT had spare commodity capacity and a lower price, so it signed a roughly 2.94 billion dollar DRAM supply deal with Tencent and, on 27 July 2026, staged the largest semiconductor IPO in mainland history, briefly becoming China’s most valuable listed company.
Can China make HBM (high-bandwidth memory) yet?
Not at the leading edge, as of 2026. HBM is the stacked memory AI accelerators need, and it is where China still depends on foreign suppliers. CXMT, the largest domestic DRAM maker, sells no HBM at all: its disclosed range is DDR4, DDR5, LPDDR4X and LPDDR5/5X, and its May 2026 listing filing names no HBM project. It is reported to be sampling 8-high HBM3 to Huawei at low yields, with 12-layer HBM3E reported to be targeted for 2027, while SK Hynix and Samsung ship HBM3E and have moved on to HBM4. China is furthest along instead in standard DRAM and NAND flash, the parts everything else runs on. Treat the HBM dates as reported, not a company roadmap disclosure.
Is it legal to buy memory from CXMT?
Yes, as of mid-2026. CXMT sits on the Pentagon’s 1260H list of Chinese military companies, a reputational and defense-contracting bar, but not on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, the one that would require an export license. An interagency committee cleared it to be added to the Entity List, but Commerce has not updated that list since October 2025, and Apple was reported to be lobbying Washington to keep the supplier reachable as memory prices spiked, per Bloomberg and the Financial Times as carried by CAD.