CXMT had a market capitalisation of about USD 524 billion on Thursday (August 13), compared with Tencent’s USD 510 billion, according to reports. The crossover came less than three weeks after the Chinese memory-chip maker’s blockbuster debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
CXMT shares fell 1.2% on Thursday but remained sharply higher after surging about 467% on their first day of trading. The company raised USD 8.6 billion through its initial public offering (IPO), with the retail portion of the offering reportedly more than 200 times oversubscribed.
The Hefei-based company makes dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), a type of semiconductor used in smartphones, computers, tablets, servers and increasingly sophisticated AI systems. It is the world’s fourth-largest DRAM producer and held a 7.67% share of the global market in 2025, according to figures in its IPO prospectus.
Investors have been betting heavily on companies supplying the infrastructure required for AI development, as technology groups around the world increase spending on computing capacity and advanced chips. CXMT’s rise also reflects China’s push to strengthen domestic semiconductor production and reduce reliance on foreign suppliers.
“CXMT exceeding Tencent is a message from the market — chips are the new clicks,” said Gary Tan, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments. He added that the gap could widen as agentic AI accounts for an increasing share of internet activity.
CXMT’s growth Demand from some of China’s biggest technology companies supports CXMT’s growth. The demand for growth from some of China’s biggest technology companies is driving CXMT’s expansion. Tencent itself signed a USD 3 billion agreement with CXMT in June for server DRAM. In July, CXMT signed a five-year server DRAM agreement worth more than USD 7 billion with ByteDance.
Server-related products accounted for 26.5% of CXMT’s revenue in 2025, up from 8.4% a year earlier, underlining the shift towards higher demand from AI and data-centre applications.
CXMT has also benefited from rising memory prices during a global supply shortage. The company swung to an operating profit of 35.43 billion yuan (USD 5.2 billion) in the first quarter, compared with an operating loss of 2.83 billion yuan a year earlier.
It plans to expand production through a sixth mega-fab and has set a target of reaching a 30% share of the DRAM market by 2030. However, the company still faces technological constraints, including a lack of access to the most advanced EUV lithography equipment used by leading international rivals.
However, an order boost may likely come from American tech giant Apple, which is reportedly testing CXMT’s memory chips across product lines, including iPhones and MacBooks, to mitigate a component shortage fuelled by the AI boom.
Apple reportedly held early talks with CXMT, which is China’s largest chipmaker by market value, about supplying components with the goal of using them in some devices sold in the world’s second-largest economy, claimed a report from the Wall Street Journal.
Laptop makers HP and Acer have already started using CXMT memory chips in devices sold outside the United States to ease supply shortages.
Tencent’s decline is partly due to concerns over the scale of its AI spending. This decline is partly due to concerns over the scale of Tencent’s AI spending. The company’s second-quarter capital expenditure jumped 176% to 52.8 billion yuan as it invested in computing capacity for AI models and agents. Its free cash flow turned negative at 13.8 billion yuan.
Tencent reported second-quarter revenue of 204.8 billion yuan, up 11% year on year, but its shares have fallen more than 26% this year.
The contrasting fortunes of CXMT and Tencent show how investors are increasingly rewarding the companies providing the physical infrastructure for the AI boom while scrutinising the cost of building and operating AI platforms.