People walk past the headquarters of ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) in Hefei, in China's eastern Anhui province on July 16, 2026. (Photo by CN-STR / AFP)
China's leading memory chipmaker CXMT became the most valuable company in the mainland after soaring 500 percent on its market debut July 27, underscoring the impact of AI-driven demand on the semiconductor sector.
The race to build data centres that power artificial intelligence has fuelled a major global memory chip shortage and caused business to boom for the companies that produce them.
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is the world's fourth-largest maker of DRAM memory chips, with nearly 8 percent market share.
It wants to rival South Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, and U.S. giant Micron.
The firm's shares rocketed more than 500 percent by mid-morning, taking its market capitalisation to 3.5 trillion yuan ($520 billion), surpassing megabank ICBC as the mainland's most valuable company.
"China is taking its place at the table for the first time, rather than merely being a sideline observer," Zhang Guobin, founder of Chinese specialist website eetrend.com, told AFP.
He called the initial public offering a "turning point in the global storage industry landscape and the development trajectory of China's semiconductor sector."
The country is increasingly counting on homegrown hardware to boost its position in the AI race against the United States.
CXMT, based in the eastern region of Anhui, had raised 66.6 billion yuan ($9.8 billion) in a blockbuster IPO, Bloomberg News reported.
