CXMT's $8.6 billion Shanghai IPO: institutional demand dented by the chip stock selloff

CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies), a Chinese memory chipmaker, carried out an initial public offering worth about $8.6 billion on the STAR Market of the Shanghai exchange, the largest IPO in Asia so far in 2026. The company's shares began trading on Monday, 27 July 2026 (5 Mordad 1405).

According to Yahoo Finance, institutional investor demand for the offering came under pressure from the wave of selling in chipmakers' shares, the same wave that began on Wall Street in recent days and reached Asian exchanges. Fund managers sold part of their positions in Chinese semiconductor shares to free up the cash needed to take part in the offering.

The expansion of memory production capacity in China is one of the three factors cited for the fall in Asian chip shares on Tuesday, 28 July, alongside concern that large cloud companies could rein in their capital spending on artificial intelligence and caution ahead of the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision. For Iran's market, the path of memory and electronic equipment prices matters through the cost of importing components and digital goods.