China’s newest memory champion – ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) – is finally public on the Shanghai market.
Investors immediately assumed that meant more trouble for Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) and SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ:SNDK), two of the best-performing names in the S&P 500 this year.
Following CXMT’s eye-popping 466% debut, Wall Street dumped virtually every memory stock in sight.
The market’s message was simple: China’s rise threatens the entire industry.
That conclusion may be far too simplistic.
On the day CXMT completed its blockbuster Shanghai IPO, TEMA ETF made the Chinese DRAM producer the largest holding in its Tema Memory ETF (NYSE:DISK), allocating 10.56% of the portfolio to the stock. The move gives the ETF the highest exposure to CXMT among U.S.-listed funds.
Yet Yuri Khodjamirian, chief investment officer at Tema ETFs, doesn’t believe investors should view CXMT’s rise as a direct threat to Micron’s AI memory franchise.
“The industry fundamentals are very strong now,” Khodjamirian told Benzinga in an exclusive interview.
“This is an undersupplied market well into 2028.”
China’s Memory Boom Isn’t About Undercutting Prices
Many investors assume CXMT will win market share by flooding the market with cheap DRAM.
Khodjamirian disagrees.
“The perception in the market is that they are a cheaper player,” he said.
“But if you look at the average selling prices for their DRAM, it’s only about a 5-10% discount.”
Tema’s own research also notes that CXMT’s products are priced only modestly below comparable Korean and U.S. memory chips, suggesting customers increasingly view the company as a credible supplier rather than simply a low-cost alternative.
Instead, CXMT is entering an industry where demand still comfortably exceeds supply.
According to SemiAnalysis forecasts cited by Tema, the memory market could remain structurally undersupplied through 2028 as AI infrastructure spending continues to absorb new capacity.
Micron’s HBM Moat Remains Safe (For Now)
The bigger misconception, he indicates, is assuming China’s advance in commodity DRAM automatically translates into leadership in high-bandwidth memory.
HBM has become one of the most technically demanding products in semiconductors.
“It took a long time for Micron’s HBM to be certified,” Khodjamirian said. “It’s not easy to do this.”
That complexity creates a moat that commodity memory never had.
Rather than competing directly with Micron or SK Hynix Inc. (NASDAQ:SKHY) inside Nvidia-powered AI servers, Khodjamirian expects Chinese-produced HBM to remain largely inside China’s domestic AI ecosystem, serving companies such as ByteDance and local cloud providers.
“I don’t think U.S. AI builders are going to be using HBM from China,” he said.
China’s own demand already exceeds CXMT’s production capacity, meaning virtually every chip the company manufactures is consumed domestically.
That doesn’t make the company irrelevant to Micron.
As Chinese PC makers, smartphone manufacturers and cloud providers increasingly source memory from domestic suppliers, they buy fewer chips from overseas producers. Over time, that import substitution changes the global supply-demand balance.
“Their capacity impacts markets because it’s a global price—it’s like oil markets,” Khodjamirian said.
Why Wall Street Still Doesn’t Believe The Memory Boom
Despite record earnings, memory stocks continue trading at single-digit forward earnings multiples.
According to Khodjamirian, investors remain convinced the industry is approaching another cyclical peak.
Tema disagrees.
“We think the market is underestimating how much these companies are signing long-term agreements with their customers and how transformed the industry has become,” he said.
“Without memory, these models don’t really work,” he added.
He also believes the rise of agentic AI is accelerating that trend because autonomous AI systems require significantly more memory than traditional chatbot workloads.
“We think the market is underestimating how much these companies are signing long-term agreements with their customers and how transformed the industry has become,” Yuri said.
Photo: Mentor57 / Shutterstock
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