China's CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies)
For those in the loop, they were the winners of the 2024-2025 memory industry 'chicken game'โan emerging powerhouse that even beat the mighty Samsung by dumping unlimited supply at dirt-cheap prices while totally ignoring their own losses.
They were such madmen that Samsung and Hynix actually decided to cut DDR4 production because they couldn't keep up with CXMT's insane output.
Since the B2B world moves pretty slow, the 'Big 7' and most Cloud/Data Center companies took a passive 'wait and see' stance on buying memory, assuming CXMT would eventually flood the market regardless of yields. In this industry, if it's cheap and works 'well enough,' that's the meta, so everyone was holding out for those cheap stocks.
This lines up with when the 'Big 3' (Samsung/Hynix/Micron) had piles of inventory sitting in warehouses during the price war. But then, this CXMT company...
Suddenly discontinued DDR4 right after winning the chicken game. Maybe they couldn't handle the massive deficit after dumping everything, or maybe they wanted to pivot to HBM for the AI eraโeither way, they basically rage-quit.
Then, just as CXMT was starting to feel themselves, the US slapped them with 'Suck on this' sanctionsโbanning equipment imports and forbidding personnel from working there. Now they can't do HBM, they can't do DDR5, and they're basically left high and dry.
So, all those companies that were being stingy and waiting for the right moment suddenly went into 'We're screwed' mode once CXMT blew up. Since the IT world moves in seconds, everyone started panic-buying every stick of RAM left starting in early 2025. But that's when they hit another wall...
Memory makers had already declared the end of low-margin RAM and were pivoting to high-margin stuff, cutting old production lines to build HBM lines instead. They were like, 'Wait, why is this happening?' and supply just couldn't keep up with the sudden surge in demand.
The result of all these compounding disasters is the current situation. This structural shift and 'Super Cycle' in the memory industry are also hitting LPDDR for phones and GDDR for GPUs hard.
This is all being baked in right now, so 2026 is basically gonna be a massive bull market for electronics prices. No one knows how much higher they'll go or if the bubble will eventually burst.
"Users are debating whether China's failed 'chicken game' or US sanctions are to blame for the current RAM price hell, with some reminiscing about the glory days of 30k won RAM sticks."
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