Financial commentator: Chinese chip company's stock price surges 466% on first day of trading; will the AI winners be reshuffled?
The race for artificial intelligence (AI) is fierce, and for the past two years, the market has focused on logic chip companies such as Nvidia , AMD, and TSMC. But now, the capital market is also beginning to realize that AI has another crucial resource that it cannot do without: storage.
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) debuted on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's technology board this week, with its share price soaring 466% on its first day of trading. Its market capitalization once exceeded US$480 billion (approximately S$620.9 billion), making it the highest-valued listed company on the Chinese A-share market and prompting global investors to reassess the competitive landscape of the entire memory chip industry.
The listing of Changxin Memory is not only the largest initial public offering (IPO) in Asia this year, but also one of the most watched capital events in the global semiconductor market in recent years.
However, Changxin Memory's strong debut has put pressure on the stock price of the world's leading memory chip manufacturer.
Micron Technology's stock price fell 2.3% overnight, and the company's stock price once plummeted by 7% during the day; SanDisk's stock price also fell by 11%; SK Hynix's stock, listed on the U.S. stock market, also fell 7.5% overnight.
Based on analyses from various analysts on social media platforms, the market is concerned that China, a rapidly rising competitor, may reshape the global dynamic random access memory (DRAM) market supply landscape in the future.
Currently, Changxin Memory Technologies Co., Ltd. (CXMT) is the world's fourth-largest DRAM manufacturer, after Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology. However, due to US export controls, CXMT is restricted from acquiring extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment from ASML in the Netherlands. Therefore, CXMT is not yet able to mass-produce high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the most profitable memory required for AI servers, and its strength still lags behind the three major international leaders.
However, this does not mean that Changxin Memory has no chance.
With the rapid popularization of AI-generated memory, market demand for HBM is expected to continue to surge. Samsung Electronics, Micron Technology, and SK Hynix are all shifting their production capacity to the more profitable AI storage products, which in turn is tightening the supply of traditional DRAM, indirectly creating opportunities for Changxin Memory to enter the consumer electronics and general server markets.
Richard Windsor, founder of research firm Radio Free Mobile, publicly pointed out that with major international manufacturers concentrating their resources on HBM, Changxin Memory is filling the traditional DRAM supply gap. He believes that once DRAM supply returns to balance in the future, Changxin Memory may face price adjustment pressures, but before that happens, it is still expected to enjoy the benefits of this boom.
China begins production of its self-developed DUVs; the market reassesses the global supply chain landscape. More noteworthy is that China is continuing to promote the self-sufficiency of its semiconductor industry.
The Information, a US technology media outlet, recently reported that China has begun producing its own deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines. While there is still a significant technological gap compared to EUV, as the technology matures, it will help Chinese wafer fabs further reduce their reliance on overseas technology and gradually narrow the gap with international competitors.
Although unconfirmed, the news still caused ASML's stock, listed on the US stock market, to fall by nearly 6% overnight, reflecting the market's reassessment of the global equipment supply chain landscape.
At the same time, global tech giants are actively securing future storage suppliers.
Nvidia recently announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea's SK Group to jointly promote a $500 billion AI factory plan and develop next-generation HBM products with SK Hynix; Broadcom has also signed a memorandum of understanding with Samsung to expand cooperation in advanced memory chips and advanced packaging, with the scale of the cooperation expected to exceed $200 billion by 2030.
Some analysts say these two collaborations don't reflect insufficient market demand, but rather that AI giants are actively securing a stable supply of memory chips for the future. The Bernstein research firm predicts that the global memory industry's annual revenue is expected to reach $1.3 trillion between 2027 and 2028. This also seems to indicate that the focus of future AI competition will gradually shift from computing power to storage power.
Source: [Lianhe Zaobao] (https://www.zaobao.com/finance/world/story20260728-9433677)