China’s $85 billion DRAM challenger starts trading Monday, and Micron investors are already feeling the pain

Micron Technology just got a new rival with an $85 billion price tag. ChangXin Memory Technologies, China’s homegrown DRAM champion, is set to begin trading on Shanghai’s STAR Market after raising approximately $8.5 billion in what amounts to one of the largest semiconductor IPOs ever on a mainland Chinese exchange. Micron’s stock dropped roughly 8% on July 15, falling to around $904 per share. From startup to fourth-largest DRAM maker in a decade Founded in 2016 by Zhu Yiming as part of Beijing’s broader push for semiconductor self-reliance, CXMT is now the world’s fourth-largest DRAM manufacturer. The company’s DRAM market share hit approximately 8% in Q1 2026, a figure that tripled compared to the year prior. CXMT reported revenue growth of 156% year-over-year to roughly $8.6 billion in fiscal year 2025, achieving positive net income for the first time. CXMT’s production capacity is forecast to reach approximately 350,000 wafer starts per month by the end of 2026, a level that would approach Micron’s own output. Where CXMT fits, and where it doesn’t CXMT specializes in commodity DRAM, the kind of memory chips that go into PCs, smartphones, and conventional servers. It has not ve...