SHANGHAI, July 27 — China’s leading memory chipmaker jumped 470 per cent in its market debut in Shanghai on Monday, briefly surpassing megabank ICBC as the mainland’s most valuable company.
The global race to build data centres that can train and run artificial intelligence technology has fuelled a major memory chip shortage and caused business to boom for the companies that produce them.
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) wants to rival South Korean giants Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, and US chipmaker Micron.
The Anhui-based company had raised 66.6 billion yuan (RM39 billion billion) in a blockbuster share sale, Bloomberg News reported, as China increasingly counts on homegrown hardware to boost its position in the AI race.
It was China’s biggest ever mainland tech share sale – beating the 46.3 billion yuan raised by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) in 2020.
On Monday, CXMT shares soared on Shanghai’s tech-focused STAR Market, taking its market capitalisation as high as 3.3 trillion yuan.
Advanced memory chips are in huge global demand as key components in AI servers.
That has sent profits skyrocketing for producers and created a major shortage of the less flashy DRAM memory chips used in laptops, phones and other electronics, pushing up prices.
US giant Apple, feeling the pinch of shortages, is reportedly testing CXMT’s DRAM chips for use in its products.
CXMT is on the Pentagon’s list of Chinese companies with alleged military ties, although that does not prohibit US firms from doing deals with them.
Founded in 2016, CXMT is the world’s fourth-largest DRAM chipmaker, with nearly eight per cent market share, behind Samsung, SK hynix and Micron. — AFP
