CXMT overtakes Tencent as China’s most valuable company

Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT Corp. surpassed Tencent Holdings on Thursday to become the world's most valuable Chinese company, a milestone that crystallizes the market's bet on semiconductor hardware over internet platforms in the age of artificial intelligence.

CXMT's market capitalization stood at $524 billion after its shares dipped 1.2% on the day, while Tencent's valuation slid to $510 billion amid investor concern over the tech giant's ballooning AI spending. The crossover caps a meteoric rise for the Hefei-based DRAM manufacturer, which debuted on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market on July 27 with a 466% first-day surge — the largest mainland-China semiconductor IPO on record at $8.6 billion in proceeds.ndtvprofit+3

AI Demand Reshapes China's Corporate Hierarchy

The shift reflects a broader reordering of investor priorities. CXMT has become a proxy for China's AI ambitions and its push for semiconductor self-sufficiency, with shares climbing an additional 8% since its debut. Tencent, by contrast, has seen its stock fall more than 26% this year after more than doubling AI capital expenditure in its June quarter — spending that weighed on profits and triggered a 4.5% drop in its Hong Kong-listed shares on Thursday.theedgemarkets+1

"CXMT exceeding Tencent is a message from the market — chips are the new clicks," said Gary Tan, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments, according to Bloomberg. "Our sense is the gap between the two will widen as agentic AI take increasing share of internet flows."ndtvprofit+1

Catalysts and Constraints

Several factors have sustained momentum beyond the IPO. MSCI's inclusion of CXMT in the MSCI China All Shares Index, effective August 10, added passive fund flows. Reports this week that CXMT's DDR5 manufacturing yields surpassed 90% — only a few percentage points behind Samsung Electronics — and that Apple ↘ 0.80% has been testing its chips for iPhones and MacBooks, pushed the stock up nearly 6% on Wednesday.ibtimes+1

CXMT is the world's fourth-largest DRAM producer with roughly 7.67% global market share, trailing Samsung, SK Hynix ↘ 3.12%, and Micron Technology ↘ 2.22%. The AI-driven shortage of conventional DDR5 — as leading producers redirect capacity toward high-bandwidth memory — has given CXMT an opening, with multi-year supply deals already signed with Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, ByteDance, Lenovo, and Xiaomi.businessupturn+1

Still, only about 6.73% of CXMT's shares are freely tradable due to lock-up restrictions, amplifying price swings and raising questions about whether current valuations can hold once more supply enters the market.ibtimes+1