I have nothing to say about this company's long term potential, but I'm curious to know whether this will become an enormous "tik stok" like SK Hynix became in South Korea. I've watched a short documentary about the investment mania in SK and it's really scary.
It's simply not possible to build profitable fabs, or large industry anymore in most of the EU. This won't change. Laws and regulation has put a stop to this. The best that EU can do is to protect existing industry.
The more interesting question is: why does the rest of the world not increase their production prowess? I am aware of most of the reasons, but I am getting tired of the "China is better than the rest of the world". It is more that China did a lot of things that the others either failed to do or no longer wanted to do. Case in point is Germany: from "our cars are best" to "hey, chinese cars are now better" (or, cheaper, for a comparative quality). This constant complaining is so strange. Would that energy not be better spent to try to become better?
If the golden stick of memory sitting on Trumps desk has its intended effect - and the US allow Apple to buy memory from CXMT then another 500% surge might happen.
The reverse might be worse for the US in the long run.
Right now, the US leads China in compute-heavy R&D because the US has access to more compute, and that compute has two components that China has limited ability to produce domestically: the GPUs themselves and the DRAM. A decent fraction of the balance of the plant is already produced in China.
If the US refuses to buy Chinese tech, then we may find ourselves paying more for compute than Chinese labs (DRAM first, but Huawei really really wants to catch up with the combined forces of TSMC, Nvidia and AMD) and falling behind on access to compute at acceptable prices.
If I were setting US policy, I would be trying to get the US-friendly companies to increase production and trying to encourage domestic production so that the US-friendly world can stay ahead. Getting held back by a DRAM cartel that wants to juice profits at the expense of output is not good for the US.
Most of the price increase did occur in Q4 2025 and most prices are fairly stable since then. Maybe this is different for LPDDR, GDDR, or HBM, but I would like to see evidence for that.
You would think that the DRAM shortage would propel Europe to invest in DRAM fabs. But no, they think it's too risky because prices may fall in the next few years and building fabs costs a lot of money and is hard. They'd rather sell other people's stuff than make it themselves.
Ergo, the Chinese will take this sector too without so much of a whimper from Europe.
In a couple of years the Chinese will own 25% of the DRAM market and make bumper profits akin to Big Tech. Europe's response will be to levy import tariffs to at least siphon off some money from it.
It's not possible. High living costs, high energy costs (100x of China) and high regulatory costs all mean that if you were to build a modern fab, you'd need to sell your product for way more than the price offered by the competition in Asia and the USA, just to break even.
The interstate competition you see in the USA, where states compete against each other for companies to invest, is plain illegal in the EU.
EU countries are not allowed to compete against each other by offering targeted state aid as incentive. This is to prevent wealthier EU nations from outcompeting poorer EU nations when it comes investments.
Basically the EU, in our infinite wisdom, are forever doomed to be disadvantaged.
I wouldn’t take much stock in the SSE (Shanghai stock exchange) just yet. It’s still a very much insider traded market, and if you aren’t a whale or very good at following whales, you aren’t going to do very good.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 32.9 ms ] threadNo matter what happens the Chinese will carve out a niche since they're playing the long game. And DRAM will always be needed.
Of course CXMT, Micron, and family will still be profitable, but maybe not 'surge 470% from IPO' profitable.
[1]whether it is 10x in size, or maybe running 10x the models to have things like judges etc.
Right now, the US leads China in compute-heavy R&D because the US has access to more compute, and that compute has two components that China has limited ability to produce domestically: the GPUs themselves and the DRAM. A decent fraction of the balance of the plant is already produced in China.
If the US refuses to buy Chinese tech, then we may find ourselves paying more for compute than Chinese labs (DRAM first, but Huawei really really wants to catch up with the combined forces of TSMC, Nvidia and AMD) and falling behind on access to compute at acceptable prices.
If I were setting US policy, I would be trying to get the US-friendly companies to increase production and trying to encourage domestic production so that the US-friendly world can stay ahead. Getting held back by a DRAM cartel that wants to juice profits at the expense of output is not good for the US.
No way he's letting Chinese chips in.
Is this accurate? It looks like they are no longer rising, at least for DDR5 memory:
https://de.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
Most of the price increase did occur in Q4 2025 and most prices are fairly stable since then. Maybe this is different for LPDDR, GDDR, or HBM, but I would like to see evidence for that.
Ergo, the Chinese will take this sector too without so much of a whimper from Europe.
In a couple of years the Chinese will own 25% of the DRAM market and make bumper profits akin to Big Tech. Europe's response will be to levy import tariffs to at least siphon off some money from it.
The interstate competition you see in the USA, where states compete against each other for companies to invest, is plain illegal in the EU.
Tax breaks? Illegal. Subsidized energy? Illegal. Subsidized land? Illegal. Permit exemptions? Illegal.
EU countries are not allowed to compete against each other by offering targeted state aid as incentive. This is to prevent wealthier EU nations from outcompeting poorer EU nations when it comes investments.
Basically the EU, in our infinite wisdom, are forever doomed to be disadvantaged.