China's CXMT now out-prices Samsung on server DRAM amid the AI memory shortage

China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has flipped from price challenger to price setter: it now charges more per unit than Samsung for comparable 64-gigabyte DDR5 server memory modules, people familiar with the matter say. That reverses the discounting that defined Chinese memory only months ago.

CXMT has grown into the world’s fourth-largest memory chipmaker, and together with rival Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) it is now picking customers and dictating prices as an AI-driven boom drains global memory supply.

The leverage is already reshaping deals. CXMT has signed a five-year supply agreement worth more than $7 billion with ByteDance and a separate deal worth more than $3 billion with Tencent, according to people familiar with the arrangements. In June, CXMT ordered engineers from a Huawei-linked equipment vendor off its factory floor amid a pricing standoff with Huawei.

The increases have drawn domestic pushback: several Chinese electronics firms have complained to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology about the price hikes.

The pricing power comes with a US target on it. The Pentagon has designated both CXMT and YMTC as Chinese military-linked companies, a label that limits their access to American technology and customers even as demand surges.

The pricing figures come from people familiar with the deals rather than CXMT, which does not disclose contract terms, and reflect a specific slice of the server-memory market during an acute shortage.