CXMT's first-half revenue soared as AI fueled a global memory chip shortage

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The Chinese chipmaker posted net profit of 77.6 billion yuan in its first earnings report since going public in July

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ChangXin Memory Technologies reported first-half revenue of 150.31 billion yuan ($22.4 billion) on Friday, a rise of 874% from a year earlier, as a global shortage of memory chips driven by artificial intelligence demand sent prices higher.

The Hefei-based company, which goes by CXMT, also turned profitable, recording net income of 77.61 billion yuan after having reported a 2.3 billion yuan loss in the prior full year. Revenue for the first half alone more than doubled what the company brought in across all of 2025, when it recorded 15.4 billion yuan in sales. Both revenue and profit topped the company's own guidance of 110 billion yuan to 120 billion yuan in sales.

The results are the first CXMT has posted since its Shanghai initial public offering last month. The company is the world's fourth-largest maker of DRAM memory chips, behind Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron $MU Technology.

CXMT pointed to tightening global DRAM supply as the engine of its results, and said the same conditions are expected to persist through the remainder of the year. AI companies have moved to secure memory chips for data centers, tightening supply and pushing up prices. Research firm TrendForce estimates that contract prices for server DRAM rose 64% in the second half of 2025, according to the Wall Street Journal.

CXMT also said its forthcoming LPDDR6 memory, a chip category aimed at smartphone and tablet applications, has reached the client evaluation stage and remains on schedule for full-scale manufacturing.

The company's R&D budget expanded 87% to 6.86 billion yuan over the period, while headcount in its engineering and research ranks climbed 61% from a year ago to close to 7,500 employees.

CXMT stock surged more than 466% on its trading debut in July and has continued to climb since. The company now has a market capitalization of 3.28 trillion yuan, making it China's most valuable listed company ahead of Tencent Holdings and Alibaba. According to Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs $GS puts CXMT's valuation at around 10 times its projected 2027 earnings, placing it at a cheaper multiple than the chipmaker's international rivals.

The U.S. Department of Defense recently placed CXMT on a blacklist, though the company said on Friday the designation will not affect its day-to-day operations. For all its momentum, CXMT remains a distant challenger to the industry's leaders, with Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron collectively commanding upward of 90% of global DRAM supply, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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