Chinese memory maker CXMT posts blistering 466% leap in Shanghai IPO — bulk of spending to be focused on DRAM production, no HBM in sight

ChangXin Memory Technologies closed its first day on Shanghai’s STAR Market at 49 yuan on Monday, up roughly 466% from an 8.66 yuan offer price, giving China’s only volume DRAM maker a market capitalization of about 3.3 trillion yuan ($487 billion) and the top spot on the mainland market ahead of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The company raised 57.92 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) in Asia’s largest IPO of 2026, and its prospectus assigns the bulk of the named project spending to wafer lines and process upgrades for DRAM it already produces, with nothing earmarked for high-bandwidth memory.

The prospectus splits 29.5 billion yuan across three projects: 13 billion yuan for DRAM technology upgrades, 9 billion yuan for next-generation DRAM research, and 7.5 billion yuan for memory wafer manufacturing line upgrades. The filing contains no dedicated HBM project and no disclosed funding commitment to a near-term HBM expansion, and CXMT hasn’t broken down where the remaining roughly 28 billion yuan goes beyond describing it as working capital.

Conventional DRAM yields more than three times the bits per wafer that HBM does, and SemiAnalysis models CXMT’s 8-high HBM3 yield at around 25%. Its cost per bit on DDR5 runs more than 30% above Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron. CXMT will add around 85,000 wafer starts per month of DRAM capacity this year, against 60,000 at SK hynix, 30,000 at Micron, and 15,000 at Samsung, per SemiAnalysis estimates.

That puts the company on course for roughly 350,000 wafer starts per month by the end of 2026, within 25,000 of Micron’s total on Citrini Research’s model, before a Shanghai fab two to three times the size of its Hefei headquarters reaches volume production in 2027.

It has been reported that output is already booked through the end of 2027, with DigiTimes having cited supply chain sources and Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Apple ahead of smaller buyers in the queue. CXMT signed a five-year server DRAM agreement worth more than $7 billion with ByteDance this month, and a $3 billion deal with Tencent in June, and server products grew from 8.4% of its revenue in 2024 to 26.5% last year.

Nomura opened coverage with a buy rating and a 116 yuan target, 1,239% above the IPO price, on an assumption that CXMT’s share of global DRAM output climbs from about 10% now to 18% by the end of 2028. Morningstar puts fair value at 14.90 yuan, under a third of Monday’s close, citing the company’s lack of access to EUV lithography as the constraint on further conventional DRAM scaling. Nomura’s downside case, built around potential equipment and materials embargoes, cuts 2027 to 2028 net profit by 30% to 33%.

Only 6.73% of CXMT’s enlarged share capital was tradable at listing, and the lock-up expires on January 27, 2027. Buyers of the resulting modules aren’t getting a discount, either. Retail DDR5 kits using CXMT dies track big three pricing, and early testing has shown the dies resist voltage scaling and overclock poorly next to SK hynix parts.