Logo of Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) Photo: VCG

Chinese memory-chip producers maintained rapid development in the second quarter of 2026, with Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) entering the global top three in NAND flash shipments for the first time and the newly listed ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT)'s DRAM revenue surging 716 percent. 

This reflects both the growing scale of Chinese suppliers and favorable market conditions driven by rising memory prices and AI-related demand, an industry expert said on Thursday.

In the latest development, Chinese memory-chip maker YMTC entered the global top three in NAND flash shipments for the first time in the second quarter of 2026, narrowly overtaking Japan's Kioxia, according to the latest data released by Counterpoint Research on Wednesday. 

YMTC accounted for 14 percent of global NAND bit shipments in the second quarter, behind Samsung Electronics at 25 percent and SK hynix at 22 percent. The Chinese company edged out Kioxia, which had ranked third in the previous quarter, while Micron rounded out the top five.

The ranking is based on bit shipments, which measure the amount of NAND storage capacity shipped rather than revenue generated.

The latest advance builds on YMTC's expansion over the past year. By revenue, its global NAND market share had already risen to 13 percent in the first quarter of 2026 from 8 percent a year earlier, Counterpoint data showed.

In the second quarter, YMTC's NAND bit shipments grew 22 percent year-on-year and 5 percent quarter-on-quarter, as the company expanded supplies to domestic original equipment manufacturers while mass-producing 267-layer 3D NAND and advancing technology beyond 300 layers based on its Xtacking architecture, according to Counterpoint.

YMTC is also moving further into AI-related enterprise storage. Its PE522, a PCIe 5.0 enterprise SSD based on Xtacking 4.0-enabled 3D NAND, is designed for high-performance computing environments and specifically optimized for workloads including large-language-model inference, according to YMTC's official website.

YMTC still ranked fifth globally by NAND revenue in the second quarter, reflecting its relatively smaller presence in higher-priced enterprise SSDs, according to Counterpoint. The company plans to increase the share of eSSDs in its product mix in the second half of the year.

The latest NAND ranking also comes amid growing attention to China's broader memory-chip industry, a market long dominated by a handful of South Korean, US, and Japanese suppliers. NAND and DRAM are the two main types of memory chips: NAND is used mainly for long-term data storage in smartphones, solid-state drives, and other devices, while DRAM provides the high-speed working memory needed by computers and servers.

On the DRAM side, CXMT also maintained strong momentum, with DRAM revenue surging 716 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, after its global revenue share had risen to 8 percent in the first quarter from 3 percent a year earlier, according to Counterpoint. 

Analysts have described CXMT and YMTC as forming a "DRAM + NAND" dual-leader structure, with their expansion also driving demand across the domestic semiconductor supply chain, from equipment and materials to packaging and testing.

Tian Feng, former dean of SenseTime's Intelligence Industry Research Institute, told the Global Times on Thursday that the latest gains should be understood against a combination of stronger company-level capabilities and an improving industry cycle. 

"Chinese memory producers have expanded production and sales and built greater commercial scale, while the global memory industry has also benefited from sharply higher prices and rapidly growing AI demand since late 2025," Tian said. 

The simultaneous improvement in market share and profitability gives domestic companies greater capacity to reinvest in production expansion and product upgrading, providing a stronger base for their next stage of development, he noted.

Looking ahead, Tian said the next phase of competition should not be judged by market-share rankings alone. A more important test will be whether Chinese manufacturers can translate rising production scale into a stronger presence in higher-value products, including eSSDs and advanced memory for AI computing.