ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China's leading manufacturer of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), has attracted staggering demand for its Shanghai STAR Market IPO — with retail investors oversubscribing the offering by 212 times.
More than 9.4 million investor accounts applied for shares, submitting valid bids for nearly 817 billion shares, according to an official announcement published Thursday night. The blockbuster listing is set to raise up to 66.6 billion yuan ($9.8 billion), approaching the record set by Agricultural Bank of China's $10 billion IPO in 2010.
The overwhelming demand triggered a clawback mechanism that shifted approximately 502 million shares from the institutional tranche to retail investors. Even after expanding the online offering to about 3.85 billion shares, the final allotment rate was just 0.47%.
Professional investors also piled in. Valid preliminary bids from 285 institutional investors covered about 1.24 trillion shares — 463 times the initial offline tranche. Notably, 153 private fund products managed by High-Flyer Quant, the hedge fund co-founded by DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, submitted bids at 8.78 yuan per share for a combined 12.55 billion shares.
CXMT, based in Hefei, is the world's fourth-largest DRAM maker, behind Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology. The company priced its shares at 8.66 yuan apiece on Shanghai's tech-heavy STAR Board.
The IPO frenzy underscores Beijing's strategic push for semiconductor self-reliance amid escalating US-China tech tensions. CXMT has rapidly expanded its DRAM production capacity, becoming a symbol of China's ambitions to reduce dependence on foreign chip suppliers. Winning lottery numbers for retail allocations will be announced Monday.
The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges also signed new memoranda of understanding with the Hong Kong stock exchange to strengthen cross-border trading links, further signaling China's drive to deepen capital market integration.
