China’s largest DRAM producer wants to add another factory in Beijing, asking the local development zone for at least RMB 60M to help fund the project, Reuters reported.
CXMT’s talks with the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area are early stage and involve state-owned tech companies, and the final package could change, the wire service said. Industry watchers note that a leading-edge DRAM plant typically requires more than $10B of investment.
The company now operates three 12-inch wafer fabs, two in Hefei and one in Beijing, together good for about 300,000 wafers a month. Add the facilities being built in Shanghai and Hefei, and monthly capacity could top 600,000 wafers, more than double today’s level. TechPowerUp calculates CXMT will end the year around 350,000 wafers a month, only slightly behind Micron’s projected 375,000.
Adoption is spreading beyond China even as supply tightens. Nikkei says HP, Asus, and Acer have started using limited volumes of CXMT memory in laptops, with qualifications largely completed by mid-year. Shipment volumes remain small because CXMT reserves much of its output for domestic buyers like Huawei, and its pricing reportedly matches Samsung’s rather than undercutting it.
TrendForce ranked CXMT fourth among DRAM vendors in the first quarter with a 7.6 percent revenue share, behind the big three of Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. As the company shifts to its G4 process and trims mobile DRAM exposure, server memory is expected to become its biggest product line.
