I just noticed something quite interesting in the Chinese semiconductor market: while the sector continues to talk about Moore Threads and Moxi, there is a much larger IPO that is already here and that almost no one expected to this magnitude.

We are talking about CX Technology, a company that applied for its listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange at the end of 2025 and is now in full activity. To give you perspective: its pre-IPO valuation reached approximately 150 billion yuan, while Moore Threads barely reached 24.6 billion and Moxi 21 billion. Basically, we are talking about a completely different player.

What’s fascinating is that CX Technology is now the fourth-largest DRAM manufacturer in the world, breaking the monopoly that Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron had maintained for decades. Its DDR4 chips already account for about 5% of the global market in 2024, and that’s despite being at zero not long ago.

Behind all this is Zhu Yiming, a figure who had already scaled a mountain with GigaDevice, where he became one of the three largest global providers of NOR Flash memory. But after achieving that success, he made a decision that sounds almost reckless: to withdraw from GigaDevice in 2016 to fully enter the DRAM market, the most competitive territory, with higher investment and greater industry risk. To demonstrate his commitment, he publicly announced that he would not take salary or bonuses until CX Technology was profitable.

The strategy was smart: when facing patent blockades, he legally acquired thousands of patents from Qimonda, the German company that had gone bankrupt, and built his technology on that foundation. The first major milestone came in September 2019, when they launched their first 10-nanometer DDR4 chips. Since then, they have continued to grow.

Now, what truly drives CX’s valuation in 2026 is the strongest price cycle in the sector’s history. Earlier this year, due to the explosion in demand for AI servers, the leading global DRAM manufacturers planned to increase prices by between 60% and 70%. AI servers require 8 to 10 times more memory than conventional ones, so demand is exponential while global capacity remains limited.

Financially, the recovery has been remarkable. In 2022, they lost 8.98 billion yuan; in 2023, 6.9 billion; and in 2024, they reduced losses to 5.5 billion. By 2025, they project to reach net profits between 2 and 3.5 billion yuan. Their revenue went from 24.1 billion in 2024 to a projection of 55-58 billion in 2025. That’s more than double growth.

Behind CX’s IPO is also the “Hefei model”: the Hefei municipal government took on the biggest initial risk by contributing three-quarters of the initial funds when the company had barely any technology, patents, or specialized personnel. Now Hefei is the largest indirect shareholder with approximately 21.67% stake. The strategy was not just to invest in a company but to build a complete industrial cluster with material suppliers, equipment, encapsulation, and testing.

The most recent funding round in March 2024 reached 10.8 billion yuan, bringing the valuation to that 150 billion. Investors include Tencent, Alibaba, GigaDevice, and multiple state funds. The IPO prospectus shows they plan to raise 29.5 billion yuan, making it the second-largest fundraising in the history of the science and technology board since its inception, only behind SMIC.

Seriously, if CX Technology manages to maintain this momentum through 2026, we could be witnessing not just a major IPO but a structural shift in how we view global competition in semiconductors. The question is no longer whether China can compete in DRAM, but how quickly it can scale.