- CXMT closed up 466% on its trading debut, delivering a striking paper return on Nio’s investment.
- Nio invested 158 million yuan in CXMT’s IPO strategic placement for a 0.27% stake, with an 18-month lock-up.
Nio Inc’s (NYSE: NIO) bet on China’s largest memory chipmaker is delivering a sizable paper return.
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT, SSE: 688825) began trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Star Market on Monday, closing its first day at 49.00 yuan, up 466% from its IPO (initial public offering) price of 8.66 yuan.
At that close, the company’s market value reached 3.28 trillion yuan ($483 billion), making it the most valuable listed company in China. That market capitalization is higher than Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) current $466 billion.
Nio founder, chairman and CEO William Li attended CXMT’s listing appreciation dinner in Shanghai on the evening of July 26, according to an ifeng report on Monday.
Nio founder, chairman and CEO William Li (left) attended CXMT’s listing appreciation dinner in Shanghai on July 26. Credit: ifeng
Nio took part in the IPO’s strategic placement through its subsidiary Nio Power Technology (Hefei) Co Ltd, subscribing 158 million yuan.
The unit was allocated 18,244,803 shares, or 0.27% of the initial offering, with a lock-up period of 18 months.
Based on the first-day close, the stake is worth about 894 million yuan, implying a paper gain of roughly 736 million yuan. The shares remain locked up, however, so the gain is not realized.
Nio was the only EV maker on CXMT’s strategic placement list. Other strategic investors included Xiaomi (HKEX: 1810), Alibaba Cloud, Chery (HKEX: 9973), ZTE, Tencent and Meituan. Several of them received the same number of shares and invested the same amount as Nio.
For Nio, the deal looks more like a supply-chain investment than a purely financial one.
The company is CXMT’s cornerstone strategic partner in dynamic random access memory (DRAM), with the two working together on automotive-grade LPDDR4X and LPDDR5X products.
Li has said the cooperation is progressing smoothly and helps stabilize Nio’s supply chain.
The timing matters. Surging global memory prices have become one of the biggest sources of cost pressure for EV makers this year.
Automakers are competing with AI data centers, smartphones and consumer electronics for memory capacity.
At a media briefing in January, Li said rising memory prices were creating more cost pressure than other raw materials, and were especially painful for models that come standard with smart driving and smart cockpit systems.
On July 10, he said raw material price increases had added nearly 20,000 yuan to the cost of each ES8 SUV (sport utility vehicle), and that fully covering the increase would in theory require a 30,000 yuan price hike.
CXMT is based in Hefei, Anhui province, the central Chinese city that is also home to Nio’s plants. CXMT held a 7.67% share of the global DRAM market in the fourth quarter of 2025, ranking fourth, according to Omdia.
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($1 = 6.7911 yuan)
