How to Invest in CXMT, the Chinese DRAM Company -- and Why You Might Not Want To

Memory stocks have become the beating heart of the artificial intelligence revolution. If you want to train up an AI system, you probably want some good graphics processing units (GPUs). Once you're ready to transition to agentic AI, central processing units (CPUs) are the chips for you. But no matter what you're doing in AI, from training a large language model (and ensuring it remembers what you taught it), to using a model you've built to answer questions (and hope it remembers the question), to performing tasks -- well, you're going to need memory chips for that.

A lot of memory chips.

According to Wall Street analysts, more chips than are currently being produced -- and more chips than will be produced next year.

Image source: Getty Images.

China to the rescue?

In July 2026, a new Chinese memory company burst onto the scene with the aim of (1) helping to alleviate the deficit in global memory chips and (2) grabbing gobs of memory chip market share for itself, at the expense of Samsung (OTC: SSNLF), SK Hynix (NASDAQ: SKHY), and Micron (NASDAQ: MU).

According to the latest data from The Wall Street Journal, these three memory companies "control more than 90% of the global DRAM market." And while the precise numbers ebb and flow from quarter to quarter, Counterpoint Research data largely confirm this, showing Samsung with a 38% share, SK Hynix at 25%, and Micron nearly tied at 24% at the end of Q2.

CXMT, only an also-ran just one year ago, more than doubled its share from 4% to 10% by the end of Q2.

How to buy CXMT stock

CXMT is clearly a company on the move. WCCFTech clocked the company's Q2 revenue growth at a whopping 716%. On the day of its IPO, CXMT stock gained an astounding 466% and closed at a $487 billion market capitalization as investors rushed to buy the next big thing in DRAM.

Chinese investors, I should specify. Because as much as U.S. investors might want to get in on the ground floor at CXMT, too, they cannot.

You see, "CXMT" may sound a lot like a ticker symbol on the Nasdaq, but it's actually just the initials of the company's name when it went public: ChangXin Memory Technologies. Trading on the Shanghai stock exchange, it's basically impossible for U.S. investors to buy CXMT stock directly. And the only way to own it indirectly (to my knowledge) is to buy shares of the KraneShares China Technology & Semiconductor STAR 50 Index ETF (NYSEMKT: KSTR), which boasts that it's "the only U.S.-listed ETF with direct ownership of CXMT."

Should you want to buy CXMT?

So that's the good news: If you feel you absolutely, positively, must own a piece of China's hottest DRAM stock, well, there's a way to do that. But here's the next question: Should you want to?

Because there are at least two good reasons you might not want to buy the KSTR ETF and own a piece of CXMT.

Reason No. 1 is that it would be a really small piece. According to KraneShares, CXMT stock makes up less than 2% of KSTR's total investments. CXMT may be, as KraneShares advertises, "China's leading dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) manufacturer and ... the world's fourth-largest DRAM producer by capacity and shipments, with an estimated 7-8% global market share as of late 2025." But buying KSTR will only get you a toenail's worth of that market share.

And here's the worse news: That toenail may already be shrinking.

Counterpoint Research reports that after rising from 7% to 10% in Q2, CXMT's market share reversed, sliding to 9% in Q3. Largely, this is because the incumbent giants aren't taking CXMT's challenge lying down. Samsung in particular, says WCCFTech, is scaling up DRAM production and targeting the market for high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips sold to data centers.

CXMT also wants to enter the data center market, but its HBM chips aren't yet ready for prime time, with only 20% to 30% of HBM3E chips produced being usable. What's more, CXMT's customers are largely limited to other Chinese companies -- probably mostly PC- and mobile device makers -- that use lower-end, less expensive DRAM, resulting in a smaller market share (as measured by revenue rather than units shipped).

The longer this situation lasts -- with Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron increasing their share of more valuable HBM DRAM sales while CXMT is relegated to selling low-margin memory chips to electronics companies -- the harder it will be for CXMT to reach critical mass.

My advice: Forget about buying CXMT stock for now. Buy Micron stock at less than 4 times forward earnings instead.

Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.