CXMT's Market Cap Surpasses Tencent, Becoming China's Most Valuable Company
Nashnova编辑部
CXMT closed at a $524 billion market cap, surpassing Tencent's $510 billion — a milestone that signals capital shifting from internet platforms to AI hardware.
What happened?
CXMT (长鑫存储) fell 1.2% last Thursday, closing at a $524 billion market cap. Tencent dropped 4.5% the same day, sliding to $510 billion.
This means → both stocks fell, but Tencent fell harder, flipping the ranking.
The trigger for Tencent's sell-off: it disclosed plans to more than double AI spending in the June quarter, sparking concerns over near-term profitability.
How did CXMT rise so fast?
CXMT listed in Shanghai last month. It surged 467% on day one, then added another 8%, quickly becoming the largest company on China's A-share market.
MSCI added it to the MSCI China All Shares Index on August 10. In plain terms = passive funds tracking that index were forced to buy in, giving the stock an extra tailwind.
Headquartered in Hefei, Anhui, the company is the world's fourth-largest DRAM producer — DRAM being the memory chips inside smartphones and AI servers that hold data temporarily. The market treats it as a proxy for China's AI-hardware self-sufficiency push.
What went wrong for Tencent?
Tencent's stock has fallen more than 26% year-to-date.
This means → even with assets like WeChat and Riot Games, the profit pressure from ramping AI investment has forced the market to re-rate its valuation.
In plain terms = investors now pay more for "the company that makes chips" than for "the company that spends on AI compute."
What does the market make of this swap?
Gary Tan, portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments, said: "CXMT overtaking Tencent is a market signal — chips are the new traffic."
He expects the gap to widen further as agentic AI captures a growing share of internet traffic.
This reflects a shifting pricing logic across China's AI supply chain: makers of hardware are valued above users of hardware — but whether that thesis holds depends on earnings in the quarters ahead.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.