Afternoon update 5:06 PM ET

Memory Report — 2026-07-11

the CXMT July 16 IPO priced at $4.4 billion, Apple testing CXMT DRAM, and the SK Hynix leveraged ETFs launching July 13. The DRAM contract price update on 6/30 and the class-action lawsuit are also relevant. Let me write the brief.

China's largest memory maker just set the terms of its Wall Street rival, with ChangXin Memory Technologies confirming it will debut on Shanghai's STAR Market on July 16 to raise roughly $4.4 billion, a war chest aimed squarely at the DRAM turf Samsung and SK Hynix are vacating.

CXMT, China's largest DRAM maker, will list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market on July 16, raising CNY 29.5 billion, and has aggressively targeted the DDR4 commodity memory market vacated by Samsung and SK Hynix as they pivot to HBM, boosting its global market share to 7.67% last year. The scale is notable: the IPO is the largest on the Chinese mainland since CNOOC's $5.1 billion listing in 2022 and the second-largest ever on Shanghai's STAR Market, with the market estimating CXMT's post-listing enterprise value at up to CNY 300 billion, roughly $44.3 billion. The proceeds are earmarked for the core franchise, not the frontier: planned net proceeds are allocated to three projects, 7.5 billion yuan for memory-wafer production-line technology upgrades, 13 billion yuan for DRAM memory-technology upgrades, and 9 billion yuan for forward-looking DRAM research. The bull-case caveat holds, though. CXMT still lags South Korean rivals by two to three years in advanced products like HBM, and its incremental commodity output is unlikely to loosen the global balance before 2027.

The demand-side validation arrived from Cupertino. Apple is testing DRAM memory chips from CXMT, according to the Financial Times, following a July 1 report that Apple was in talks to buy memory from Chinese semiconductor companies CXMT and YMTC. The strategic logic is transparent: securing CXMT as a fourth DRAM supplier would give Apple leverage in price negotiations with the existing three memory makers. The obstacle is Washington. CXMT sits on the Pentagon's 1260H list of companies with alleged connections to the Chinese military, and while Apple isn't barred from using it, the company is seeking guarantees CXMT won't be added to the US Entity List amid trade friction over rare earths.

On the tape, pricing power is intact even as the pace cools. DRAM contract prices continue to rise, driven by tight supply and expectations of negative production growth, with manufacturers continuing to raise quotes. For investors chasing the trade directly, Themes ETFs is launching the Leverage Shares 2x Long SK Hynix Daily ETF and the 1x Short SK Hynix Daily ETF on Cboe on July 13, 2026.

Watch CXMT's July 15 book-building and the July 16 open for how aggressively domestic capital chases the memory supercycle, and whether Apple's qualification signal draws a US policy response.

July 11th, 2026

Memory Report — 2026-07-11

Sources