China’s largest maker of memory chips is raising billions of dollars in a blockbuster public offering to pursue the nation’s agenda of technological self-sufficiency and leadership in the global race to develop artificial intelligence.
ChangXin Memory Technologies, known as CXMT, said in a filing on Wednesday that it had roughly doubled the price of its offering on the Shanghai exchange from earlier guidance, based on strong investor demand. It is seeking to raise the equivalent of up to $9.8 billion.
That would be the largest initial public offering in Asia this year, and one of the biggest ever on an exchange in mainland China.
The Chinese chip maker is tapping sky-high investor enthusiasm. Last week, SK Hynix, a South Korean memory chip giant, raised $26.5 billion by selling shares in the United States, in the largest such offering on Wall Street by a non-U.S. company.
CXMT is riding the A.I.-led boom in demand for memory chips, which instantaneously shuttle data to and from the processing engines of computers. All computers rely on memory chips, but the demands of A.I. data centers being built in the United States and China seem all but limitless.
The 10-year-old firm cannot operate as freely as many of its rivals. It is prevented from acquiring some of the most advanced chip-making tools by export restrictions imposed on Chinese firms by the United States and other countries, bowing to American pressure.
