Chinese chipmaker shares surge 470%

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q9w3x9qn2o

Comments

fookerJul 27, 2026, 10:40 AM
Prediction - we are going to figure out SOTA AI performance without requiring 1TB of memory within a year or so.

Of course CXMT, Micron, and family will still be profitable, but maybe not 'surge 470% from IPO' profitable.

whazorJul 27, 2026, 11:36 AM
Yeah, you can directly print the SOTA AI model on the chip. I also believe this can be done on older process nodes. The most important factor would be speed. How fast can you go from new model to new chip?
xyzsparetimexyzJul 27, 2026, 11:08 AM
How would we do that? There's no historic precedent for that. Its fundamentally an information theory thing: what's the max amount of intelligence you can get out of 1 KB/MB/GB? There has to be a limit and I'm not convinced that it's far off.
londons_exploreJul 27, 2026, 11:17 AM
It doesn't matter. However much intelligence you can squeeze into 1 GB, people will always want more.

Standard Def TV was plenty for 50 years. But when more was on offer, everyone went for it, and now you can't even buy a 480p TV.

sureglymopJul 27, 2026, 11:35 AM
Don't forget that it's only an assumption that scaling more results in better models. There may be a ceiling to that. If that is hit and the best performing possible model can run in little VRAM, your argument here doesn't hold anymore.

In a way it is actually the same thing that makes us accept AI as working in the first place. It only needs to be good enough for human perception. The same is probably true for compute.

CamelCaseNameJul 27, 2026, 11:27 AM
Your example contradicts you.

2K, 4K, and 8K+ TVs have been around forever, and although 4K has become the norm, it's widely accepted that there isn't much benefit for most people above 1080p

oblioJul 27, 2026, 11:32 AM
Yeah, but that's based on a hard limits, the physics of the eye. The example was poorly chosen.
t-sauerJul 27, 2026, 11:26 AM
Your example also counters your point: A lot of people do not care about 4k, and even less do care about 8k or above. We reached a point where most people are completely happy with the quality they get.
esternaJul 27, 2026, 11:27 AM
Once I start a conversation about Postgres query plans, maybe 95% of the knowledge will be almost certainly not needed, and for an inference provider there will be many more concurrent queries with reasonably large overlap. Maybe future architectures will be able to take advantage of this so not all parameters are needed in memory for almost all instances.

If we are talking about all knowledge, then I agree that the compression ratio is very impressive already.

yieldcrvJul 27, 2026, 11:14 AM
It’s not just about small models, that’s only one part of evolution

Some groups are baking models into silicone, Deepmind has an example, it gets 18,000 tokens/sec on Llama 3.1, not sure about parameter size

intrasightJul 27, 2026, 11:28 AM
I think this is the future - at least it will be for on-device models. Apple, for instance, will "bake silicon" once a year for their current model, and use that chip in all their devices.
raincoleJul 27, 2026, 11:00 AM
And by the time the models that require 1TB memory will be better.

It's like people saying mobile chips are going to be better than PC chips... until they realize PC can be made of mobile chips too if that comes true.

ImprobableTruthJul 27, 2026, 10:57 AM
The fundamental issue is that for these systems bigger is essentially always better (if affordable). So if we can squash something like Kimi K3 down to run on a 'normal' system, that just incentivizes devs to increase the model size until once again we're at the limit of what can be run.
clbrmbrJul 27, 2026, 11:21 AM
Are you thinking of fundamental architectural changes (like the Transformer)? Or incremental (like MoE or GQA)? Are there specific neolabs or techs you are following that lead you to this prediction?

Indeed it seems quite possible we are one architecture breakthrough away from existing chip stock driving us all the way to ASI.

Nobody has done AFAIK the information theory to prove it’s not possible.

Dibby053Jul 27, 2026, 10:54 AM
What do you base this prediction on? It seems very unlikely, unless by SOTA you mean the current SOTA.
dist-epochJul 27, 2026, 11:13 AM
Even if we do, we are going to need a lot of RAM for the billions of agents running everywhere.
greenavocadoJul 27, 2026, 11:30 AM
NOPE. The opposite will happen. CXMT will flood the market thus making 1 TB models affordable.
yieldcrvJul 27, 2026, 10:51 AM
that would be perfect timing

Hyperscalers are screwed, data center mania couldn’t even be completed during this massive spending spree, all while the people seemingly sitting on the sidelines are working on getting these things baked into the OS and chipsets in a way consumers wouldn’t notice

jonkoopsJul 27, 2026, 10:36 AM
EU chip industry: best I can do is eat glue in the corner.
dadoumJul 27, 2026, 11:34 AM
CXMT uses old Qimonda patents (even though Qimonda's tech is now outdated), and the former CEO of Qimonda is currently building a fab for an FeRAM-based alternative to DRAM in Magdeburg. It's a gamble and FeRAM still todays suffer from a more limited lifetime than conventional DRAM but I think there are still somewhat interesting developments happening in Europe.
altern8Jul 27, 2026, 11:03 AM
EU: we should create a law regulating the viscosity of the glue being eaten
AmpersanderJul 27, 2026, 11:21 AM
EU bourgeoisie invests in US tech
b3ornJul 27, 2026, 10:45 AM
EU chip industry: best I can do is power electronics.
nimchimpskyJul 27, 2026, 10:59 AM
EU Chip industry : ASML, 2nd to only nvidia, 0.5T mkt cap
eckelhestenJul 27, 2026, 11:31 AM
They sell the shovels, we need someone actually digging for gold.
Foobar8568Jul 27, 2026, 11:27 AM
STMicroelectronics cries in a corner.
glimsheJul 27, 2026, 10:11 AM
I have nothing to say about this company's long term potential, but I'm curious to know whether this will become an enormous "tik stok" like SK Hynix became in South Korea. I've watched a short documentary about the investment mania in SK and it's really scary.
samrusJul 27, 2026, 10:17 AM
If the chinese government feels its critical to china's success then it will be backed like alibaba and wechat and others were
_trampeltierJul 27, 2026, 10:16 AM
Tesla is kind the same. Everybody bought it, because it went up so much, less because of the product. I guess every AI would do the same.
rokkamokkaJul 27, 2026, 10:31 AM
I wonder what the effects of TSLA dropping to reasonable levels (a drop of about 90%) would look like.
SchlagbohrerJul 27, 2026, 11:09 AM
Morgan Stanley said that SpaceX's space activities are only worth $8 per share...
fragmedeJul 27, 2026, 11:36 AM
Morgan Stanley's target price for SPCX in their report is $300, with $8 being the space component, and the other $292 being AI stuff. The Morgan Stanley report doesn't say SPCX is worth $8/share. Just to be clear about what the report says.
rapseyJul 27, 2026, 11:33 AM
Most people here seem to have a serious misunderstanding of what a stock price means. It reflects investor expectations. Not current revenue.
blitzarJul 27, 2026, 11:02 AM
If the golden stick of memory sitting on Trumps desk has its intended effect - and the US allow Apple to buy memory from CXMT then another 500% surge might happen.
cubefoxJul 27, 2026, 11:24 AM
> Once an affordable component used to build devices, memory prices have more than doubled in recent months - and are still rising.

Is this accurate? It looks like they are no longer rising, at least for DDR5 memory:

https://de.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

Most of the price increase did occur in Q4 2025 and most prices are fairly stable since then. Maybe this is different for LPDDR, GDDR, or HBM, but I would like to see evidence for that.

cluckindanJul 27, 2026, 10:39 AM
Let’s see them ship some chip first
blitzarJul 27, 2026, 11:05 AM
> 8% to 9% of the worldwide DRAM market share in 2025

how much more do they need to ship to satisfy you?

kubbJul 27, 2026, 11:34 AM
10x
feverzsjJul 27, 2026, 10:45 AM
The price is similar, as they all rely on same upstream suppliers. The quality is kinda meh.
grumbelbart2Jul 27, 2026, 11:02 AM
They don't have access to EUV machines from ASML though.
feverzsjJul 27, 2026, 11:08 AM
EUV is only required for highend ram like HBM3E, HBM4.
shevy-javaJul 27, 2026, 10:47 AM
The more interesting question is: why does the rest of the world not increase their production prowess? I am aware of most of the reasons, but I am getting tired of the "China is better than the rest of the world". It is more that China did a lot of things that the others either failed to do or no longer wanted to do. Case in point is Germany: from "our cars are best" to "hey, chinese cars are now better" (or, cheaper, for a comparative quality). This constant complaining is so strange. Would that energy not be better spent to try to become better?
brabelJul 27, 2026, 11:04 AM
50 years ago you could ask the same question about Europe, the USA and Japan: why are they so much more productive than everyone else?

So others did spend energy on becoming better and now you see a different picture when you look at the world.

mosuraJul 27, 2026, 10:57 AM
It is because in the west we suffer from self inflicted obstacles that make it impossible to get out of our own way. The Chinese gov must think they are playing on easy mode.
raizer88Jul 27, 2026, 11:01 AM
Because the capitalist west doesn't have strategic view, beside maybe on the defense sector. Everything else must produce profits next quarter not in the next 3 years.
SchlagbohrerJul 27, 2026, 11:11 AM
It's this. Wall Street won't allow american companies to make long term decisions and long term planning that cost money in the short term, because they want all that money immediately now. Like, right now now. If an executive promised they could deliver big profits in 5 years by spending the next two investing their profits, Wall Street would fire them and put in someone who will happily spend all the profit (plus debt) to do stock buybacks and dividend disbursals.
mschuster91Jul 27, 2026, 10:58 AM
> Would that energy not be better spent to try to become better?

The problem is, shareholders have bled Western companies dry in the chase for returns on investments. There is no money left in the companies to retool them to be competitive with China.

Meanwhile, the CCP just pours dollars into their companies.

Unfortunately, there is no punishment in Western societies if you run a company into the ground as long as you pay your debts on the way out.

dist-epochJul 27, 2026, 11:15 AM
It takes 2 years in EU to get approval to build a shed. Imagine how long it takes to get approvals for a chip factory which uses a lot of water and very toxic chemicals.

UK has been trying to get approvals for a new runway at Heathrow airport for over 20 years !!! now.

levanleviJul 27, 2026, 10:32 AM
is it retail or hype driven - that's the question
feverzsjJul 27, 2026, 10:42 AM
It's driven by the supreme leader's grand plan, like everything else there.
VulgarExigencyJul 27, 2026, 11:09 AM
Seems to be working out better than leaving it up to the market
pingouJul 27, 2026, 11:25 AM
Why does the US stock market keep having record years while the population doesn't seem to benefit, whereas the opposite is happening in China? Isn't that a failure of US capitalism?