Chinese chipmaker shares surge 470% in blockbuster stock market debut

What the report says

BBC World News reported that shares of ChangXin Memory Technologies, China’s largest memory-chip producer, jumped more than 470% on their first day of trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Star Market. The debut lifted the company’s market value to about 3.3 trillion yuan, or roughly $487.3bn, which the BBC said made it the most valuable listed company in mainland China.

CXMT, founded in 2016 by chairman Zhu Yiming and based in Hefei in eastern China’s Anhui province, makes dynamic random-access memory, or Dram, used in AI data centres, smartphones, PCs, tablets and other electronics. The company has said it intends to direct most of the IPO proceeds toward expanding memory-chip output and further research and development.

The listing stood out because it came during a wider global technology-stock sell-off and after a recent slump in Chinese equities that the BBC said erased more than $1.5tn in value. Analysts cited by the BBC said the first-day surge reflected an imbalance between heavy demand and limited freely traded stock. Anna Macdonald of Hargreaves Lansdown told the BBC that only 7% of the shares were available for trading, helping explain the unusually large move.

The debut also underscored investor interest in domestic semiconductor firms as Beijing seeks greater technological self-sufficiency. The BBC noted that the global Dram market remains dominated by Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron, which together account for around 90% of production. The AI boom has strengthened demand for memory chips, adding momentum to major chip-related listings and valuations.