Memory maker CXMT overtakes Tencent to become China’s most valuable company 17 days after its IPO — now worth $524 billion

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is now the world’s most valuable Chinese company after passing Tencent today, with a market cap of $524 billion against the Internet giant’s $511 billion. CXMT’s own shares fell 1.2% on the day; the crossover happened because Tencent fell further after disclosing a 176% surge in capital spending on AI infrastructure in its second-quarter results. In doing so, CXMT has taken the top spot less than three weeks after its 466% first-day surge in Shanghai. Tencent is itself a CXMT customer, having signed a $3 billion server DRAM agreement with the memory maker in June.

Tencent reported second-quarter revenue of RMB 204.8 billion ($30.3 billion) on Wednesday, up 11% year-over-year, with capital expenditure climbing 176% to RMB 52.8 billion as the company bought computing capacity for its AI models and agents. Free cash flow went negative at RMB 13.8 billion. Tencent’s U.S.-listed shares dropped 5.34% following the report, extending a decline that’s reached 26% so far in 2026, even as domestic games revenue grew 17% and marketing services revenue rose 22%.

A slice of that spending will flow to the company that just displaced it. Alongside the June agreement with Tencent, CXMT signed a five-year server DRAM deal worth more than $7 billion with ByteDance in July, and server products grew from 8.4% of CXMT’s revenue in 2024 to 26.5% in 2025. Investors are penalizing the buyer of AI hardware while rewarding its supplier, in part over the same purchase orders.

CXMT held 7.67% of the global DRAM market in 2025, according to sales figures in its IPO prospectus. Its $524 billion market cap now sits at roughly half of Micron’s $1 trillion and about 60% of SK hynix’s $880 billion, and the company plans to close the output gap with a sixth mega-fab and a 30% DRAM share target by 2030, though it still lacks the EUV lithography tools its rivals use.

CXMT swung to an operating profit of 35.43 billion yuan ($5.2 billion) in the first quarter from a 2.83 billion yuan loss a year earlier, riding DRAM prices that have climbed throughout the ongoing memory shortage. The company became the first semiconductor firm to top mainland China’s stock market in its 35-year history when it listed on July 27, raising $8.6 billion in an IPO whose retail tranche was 212 times oversubscribed.

Analysts remain far apart on whether CXMT’s ranking holds water, however, with Nomura’s price target of 116 yuan implying further upside, while Morningstar’s fair value estimate of 14.90 yuan puts the stock at more than three times what the firm thinks it’s worth.