Source: Caixin
Today (May 27), China's leading DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) manufacturer, CXMT Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "CXMT"), successfully passed the review by the Sci-Tech Innovation Board Committee and is set to enter the capital market.
As the first "pre-review" project on the STAR Market and a hard tech giant aiming to raise RMB 29.5 billion, ChangXin Memory Technologies' approval coincides with its 10th anniversary, marking not only a milestone in the company's own development but also a significant step toward China's semiconductor memory industry breaking long-standing foreign monopolies and achieving self-reliance.
It took less than five months from acceptance to approval.
ChangXin Technology took less than five months from the acceptance of its STAR Market IPO application to approval.
As the first company to apply for listing using the pre-review mechanism following the Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market reform in July 2025, Changxin Technology’s listing review process is unique and prioritized, significantly shortening the listing timeline while avoiding competitive disadvantages from premature disclosure of business and technical information.
Based on the exchange’s previous rounds of inquiries, the main concerns center on industry cycles, technological gaps, and the sustainability of profitability—all of which directly address key pain points in the DRAM industry and critical aspects of the company’s development.
In response to the inquiry, ChangXin Memory Technologies stated that the DRAM industry is significantly affected by market supply and demand fluctuations and exhibits pronounced cyclical characteristics. Additionally, due to the high concentration of supply in the DRAM market, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology collectively hold the vast majority of market share, with their capital expenditures being highly concentrated. Decisions to increase or reduce capacity are often released simultaneously, exacerbating the industry’s cyclical nature and leading to significant price volatility in DRAM. With a high degree of product standardization, the company sets its sales prices based on market prices; therefore, fluctuations in market prices directly impact the unit price and revenue of its products, thereby affecting profitability.
Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology have developed over decades, enjoying technological first-mover advantages and cost advantages, and are better equipped to withstand risks and market shocks. In contrast, CXMT started its development later and is still in the phase of capacity construction and ramp-up. Typically, ramping up capacity on new production lines requires multiple quarters, and building a new wafer fab from capital expenditure to full capacity release can take several years. As a result, CXMT currently still lags behind leading international manufacturers in terms of revenue scale, production capacity, and product mix. Not only are its production costs relatively higher, but it is also more vulnerable to negative gross margins or increased inventory write-downs when market competition intensifies and product prices decline.
In the 2024 global DRAM market, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology held market shares of 40.35%, 33.19%, and 20.73%, respectively. This company ranks fourth globally and first in China.
The exchange is still inquiring, with particular focus on the technological gap between ChangXin Technology and the aforementioned overseas industry leaders, as well as progress in domestic industrial localization.
ChangXin Memory Technologies has achieved mass production of DDR5/LPDDR5X, filling the domestic gap in general-purpose DRAM, but still lags behind Samsung and SK Hynix in HBM (High Bandwidth Memory).
ChangXin Memory Technologies states that, after years of development, the company has become China’s largest, most technologically advanced, and most comprehensively positioned DRAM research, design, and manufacturing integrated enterprise. It has established a strong presence in two mainstream product lines—DDR and LPDDR—offering the most advanced DDR5, LPDDR5, and LPDDR5X products in the current market. Its products are widely used in servers, mobile devices, personal computers, and smart automobiles, with key performance metrics reaching international advanced levels and demonstrating strong market competitiveness.
Starting in the second half of 2025, the surge in AI computing power drove a sharp increase in storage prices, enabling Chongxin Technology to record its first annual profit. For the full year of 2025, the company achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 1.875 billion, and by the first quarter of 2026, its net profit attributable to shareholders reached RMB 24.762 billion, averaging over RMB 275 million in daily profits.
In the Shanghai Stock Exchange's inquiry, disclosure was required regarding Changxin's future profit prospects and uncertainties affecting its future development.
ChangXin Technologies stated that, as the core hub of AI computing systems, DRAM has experienced explosive market demand due to rapid advancements in AI and substantial growth in related infrastructure investments, making it one of the primary drivers of the company’s performance growth since the second half of 2025.
However, DRAM industry companies are susceptible to performance fluctuations due to cyclical factors. Companies such as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology, which entered the market earlier and have built up significant scale, product, and technological advantages over many years of development, possess a certain ability to withstand cyclical volatility.
However, ChangXin also stated that as its production capacity continues to ramp up, the company is rapidly closing the gap with the top three international manufacturers, with its competitiveness steadily strengthening. At the same time, with product sales experiencing rapid growth, it has developed strong resilience against cyclical fluctuations. Given the current positive market outlook, the company’s expectation of achieving profitability in 2026 or 2027 is both reasonable and prudent.
The shareholder list is impressive, and many A-share companies are likely to benefit.
Due to the extremely high initial production and R&D costs associated with the IDM model, ChangXin Memory Technologies has undergone multiple rounds of financing, ultimately forming a large and diverse shareholder base.
ChangXin Memory Technologies has no controlling shareholder or actual controller. The largest shareholder of ChangXin Memory Technologies is Hefei Qinghui Jidian Enterprise Management Partnership (Limited Partnership), which directly holds 21.67% of the company’s shares.
The shareholder list of ChangXin Memory Technologies includes state-backed investors such as the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund II (Big Fund II), Anhui Investment Group, and the National Adjustment Fund.
Meanwhile, industrial capital such as GigaDevice is deeply integrated, and major internet and consumer electronics giants including Midea Capital, Xiaomi, Alibaba, and Tencent also appear on the shareholder list.
In addition, prior investors in ChangXin Technologies include renowned market-oriented investment institutions such as China Merchants Capital, Junlian Capital, Anyuan Fund, Jishi Capital, Yanchuang Capital, Lanpu Investment, Yunfeng Capital, Yanyuan Venture Capital, Mingsheng Capital, Qianhai Mother Fund, and Huafu Jiaye.
Prior to ChangXin Technology's listing, due to multiple listed companies' affiliated funds having previously invested in ChangXin, a related concept sector emerged in the market. Every update on its listing progress, from the filing of its listing advisory to the review meeting, has drawn significant market attention.
In ChangXin Technology's latest prospectus, five securities firms—China Merchants Securities, Huaxin Securities, CITIC Construction Securities, Founder Securities, and CICC—are listed as investors through their subsidiaries or affiliated funds. Given that ChangXin Technology is expected to reach a market capitalization of trillions upon listing, the book values of these firms' equity stakes are projected to significantly boost their net profit figures. As a result, securities stocks have attracted strong market interest due to the progress of ChangXin's IPO.
In addition, since the beginning of this year, several listed companies have disclosed their equity investment connections with CXMT through investor interaction platforms and other channels.
In addition to GigaDevice, several A-share companies including Zhengfan Technology, Shangfeng Cement, Hefei Urban Construction, Hebai Group, and Zhongshan Public Utilities have previously disclosed that they invested in ChangXin Memory Technologies through their affiliated private equity funds.
In its 2024 disclosure, GigaDevice revealed that after participating in CXMT's financing with RMB 1.5 billion of its own funds, it held approximately 1.88% of the equity following the capital increase. Zhengfan Technology stated on its interactive platform as early as July 2025 that it had made an early investment in CXMT Storage. Zhengfan Technology is a long-term partner and key supplier to CXMT Storage, collaborating with its facilities in Hefei, Beijing, and Shanghai. In October 2025, Shangfeng Cement also indicated on its interactive platform that it had invested RMB 200 million in CXMT through the private equity fund Shanghai Junzhi Pu Venture Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), resulting in an indirect equity stake of approximately 0.15%.
Zhu Yiming's Tough Chip Development and Breakthrough Journey
In the wave of China's domestic DRAM industry breaking free from technological constraints, Zhu Yiming is an indispensable key figure. He founded GigaDevice, which became the first listed company in China’s domestic memory design sector, and also established CXMT, which broke the nearly four-decade monopoly of Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, becoming the world’s fourth-largest memory manufacturer.
In 1972, Zhu Yiming was born into a modest family in Funing, Yancheng, Jiangsu, growing up in humble circumstances but demonstrating exceptional talent. At age 17, he ranked second in his county’s college entrance exam and was admitted to Tsinghua University’s Department of Physics, where he earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees within five years, revealing his remarkable technical aptitude.
In 1997, Zhu Yiming went to the United States to further his studies, enrolling at Stony Brook University, State University of New York, to pursue a master’s degree in electrical engineering. After graduation, he worked successively at ipolicy Networks Inc. and Monolithic System Technologies Inc., advancing from a senior engineer to a project manager, earning a seven-figure salary and settling in California. Yet, his comfortable life never dimmed his original aspirations. After years of industry research and experience, he personally witnessed the shift of the storage industry from the United States to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, and deeply understood China’s “bottleneck” dilemma of importing tens of billions of dollars worth of memory chips annually. He firmly recognized that China cannot be “without chips”—“without chips, there is no soul. Without mastering core technologies, a nation’s strength rests merely on sand.”
In 2004, after gaining extensive experience, Zhu Yiming decided to return to China to start a business and embark on the journey of chip development.
Zhu Yiming has a widely cited view on the storage industry: if a computer is likened to a crown, the CPU is the jewel on top, while memory is the base of the crown—and naturally, the base requires more gold and precious stones. The memory market is the largest in the IC industry; whenever a new process is developed, the first thing it is used to produce is memory. As semiconductor technology advances into the deep submicron era, the proportion of various memory types within integrated circuits continues to grow. Whoever leads memory technology will dominate the entire integrated circuit industry.
In 2005, Zhu Yiming founded GigaDevice’s predecessor, “Xinji Jiayi,” in a raw, unfinished room at Beijing’s Tsinghua Science Park, raising only $9.2 million in startup capital—a truly daunting beginning. To differentiate himself, Zhu strategically avoided the crowded DRAM market and instead focused on the relatively niche NOR Flash memory sector. By 2016, GigaDevice had listed on the main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, becoming China’s first publicly traded memory chip company. Today, GigaDevice has grown into the world’s second-largest NOR Flash supplier and a leading domestic MCU chip manufacturer, with a current market capitalization of 360 billion yuan.
After achieving what the world considers success, Zhu Yiming decisively shifted direction and, in May 2016, partnered with the Hefei municipal government to establish CXMT, with the explicit goal of breaking the overseas monopoly in the DRAM market; the project has a total investment exceeding 50 billion yuan.
In July 2018, Zhu Yiming stepped down as General Manager of GigaDevice and fully took on the role of Chairman and CEO of CXMT, vowing: “I will not accept a single yuan in salary or bonus until CXMT becomes profitable.” Over the eight years until CXMT achieved its first annual profit in 2025, the company sustained continuous losses and faced external skepticism that “China cannot produce DRAM,” yet Zhu Yiming persevered with determination.
In May 2026, ahead of Changxin's upcoming listing on the STAR Market, Zhu Yiming unveiled the largest individual equity incentive in A-share history.
The updated prospectus of ChangXin Technologies shows that Zhu Yiming has voluntarily committed to allocate 50% of his partnership interests in Hefei Jixin No. 41 Enterprise Management Partnership (Limited Partnership), approximately 768 million shares, to current employees of ChangXin Technologies and its consolidated subsidiaries over a period of ten calendar years following the completion of 36 months after ChangXin Technologies’ listing, for employee incentive purposes.
Notably, the incentive recipients do not include Zhu Yiming himself.
Based on the market's conservative estimate of a 200 billion yuan market cap, the incentive value could exceed 2 billion yuan, setting a new record for individual equity incentives on China's A-share market.
Meanwhile, Zhu Yiming also committed to an exceptionally long share lock-up period: for the first ten years after Changxin Technology’s listing, he will not transfer any of his shares, and during the second ten years following the completion of the first decade, he will reduce no more than 20% of the remaining locked shares at the end of the previous year each year. This exceptionally long share lock-up arrangement is also rare in the history of China’s A-share market.
Investors familiar with CXMT told the Science and Technology Daily that the advanced development of domestic memory is now at a critical stage of transitioning from breakthrough to mass production, with very broad prospects. Companies like CXMT have evolved from followers into peers, and are poised to become leaders in the future.
On the technical level, domestic DRAM has aligned with international mainstream standards, exemplified by the mass production of DDR5 memory chips and their integration into mainstream server supply chains. On the industrial level, China has achieved full-chain self-reliance across storage media, chips, and systems, with growing synergy and autonomy across the supply chain. On the market level, strong and sustained demand for high-end storage products such as HBM and DDR5 is being driven by AI computing power, data center construction, and the widespread adoption of smart devices.