Domestic storage, collective sprint
Recently, GigaDevice released its H1 2026 performance forecast, revealing a staggering 1099% surge in net profit. This financial result has not only ignited the capital market, but also served as a strong signal of the accelerated rise of China's domestic storage enterprises.
At present, the global storage industry is in a super cycle. According to the latest data from authoritative institutions TrendForce and Gartner, the overall global storage market size has recovered to a historically high level, with both DRAM and NAND Flash seeing consecutive quarters of simultaneous increases in price and volume. This has created a window for Chinese enterprises to achieve scale leapfrogging.
Across multiple industrial chains and segmented tracks including DRAM, NAND, NOR Flash, storage modules, and interface chips, local storage manufacturers are experiencing explosive growth. China's storage industry is moving away from the passive situation of isolated efforts or single-point breakthroughs in the past, ushering in the comprehensive rise of the entire industrial ecosystem.
Two Manufacturing Giants Sprint for IPO
As the two cornerstones of the local storage industry, CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies) and YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies) are entering a critical phase of scaled mass production and capital market positioning after reaping the benefits of core technology breakthroughs.
On July 9th, ChangXin Technology disclosed its IPO prospectus for the Shanghai STAR Market, officially launching the issuance process with subscription scheduled for July 16th. The company plans to raise 29.5 billion yuan, which will be mainly invested in technical upgrading of memory wafer manufacturing production lines, DRAM memory technology improvement, and forward-looking technology R&D.
Calculated based on the fundraising scale, this will become one of the largest A-share IPOs since 2026, and also the ultra-large semiconductor IPO second only to SMIC since the establishment of the STAR Market.
DRAM is one of the tracks in the entire semiconductor industry that most closely integrates technology, capital, and cyclical attributes. Unlike asset-light chip design companies, DRAM enterprises must simultaneously bear multiple pressures including fab construction, equipment depreciation, process R&D, product iteration, and inventory fluctuations. Even if mass production is successfully achieved, it remains difficult for enterprises to generate stable profits if production scale, yield rate, and average selling price cannot cover huge manufacturing expenses.
The performance trajectory of ChangXin Technology over the past three years has confirmed this industrial rule. From 2023 to 2025, the company's operating revenue reached approximately 9.087 billion yuan, 24.178 billion yuan, and 61.799 billion yuan respectively, while the gross profit margin of its core business rapidly increased from -2.19% in 2023 and 5.00% in 2024 to 41.02% in 2025. ChangXin Technology explained in its prospectus that the low gross profit margin in the early stage was mainly due to high depreciation and amortization during the rapid construction and ramp-up phase of production capacity, as the scale effect had not been fully released.
However, in the first half of 2026, ChangXin's profitability doubled. The company expects to achieve operating revenue of 110 billion to 120 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 612.53% to 677.31%; its attributable net profit is projected to reach 50 billion to 57 billion yuan, compared with a loss of 2.332 billion yuan in the same period last year, representing a maximum year-on-year growth of 2544.19%. This result demonstrates the combined effect of price, production volume, yield rate, and diluted fixed costs after a DRAM IDM crosses the scale break-even point.
Compared with profits, ChangXin Technology's approximately 7.7% global market share may have greater long-term significance. Omdia data shows that in 2025, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron accounted for about 33.96%, 34.48%, and 23.41% of the global DRAM market by sales respectively, with the three combined exceeding 90%. Calculated based on sales in the fourth quarter of 2025, ChangXin Technology's market share has reached 7.67%, ranking fourth globally.
DRAM is one of the markets with the highest concentration in the global semiconductor industry. Since the 1980s, the number of global DRAM manufacturers has gradually shrunk from dozens to three giants: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. The significance of ChangXin Technology reaching the fourth position globally lies in the emergence of a new variable with scaled manufacturing capabilities, complete product lines, and continuous financing capacity outside the long-standing "three-strong pattern" in the global DRAM market.
On the other side, YMTC, China's leading 3D NAND manufacturer, has also completed IPO counseling filing with the Hubei Provincial Securities Regulatory Bureau. In 2025, based on third-party valuation, YMTC entered the Hurun Global Unicorn List with a valuation of 160 billion yuan.
More important than its valuation is its global market position. According to UBS data, YMTC accounted for about 11.8% of the global NAND Flash market in 2025, while Samsung held approximately 30.4%, with SK Hynix, Kioxia, and Micron accounting for roughly 16%, 15.9%, and 13.3% respectively. UBS predicts that YMTC's market share may exceed 14% by early 2027, making it a member of the world's major NAND supplier camp.
It can be seen that China's storage industry has begun to form two real upstream pillars in the DRAM and NAND fields. In the past, although China's storage market had a large number of design, module, packaging and testing, and distribution companies, the most upstream high-capacity DRAM and NAND particles had long relied on international manufacturers. Nowadays, the two IDMs are simultaneously entering the phase of scale expansion and capitalization, which means that for the first time, the domestic industrial chain has large platforms capable of driving wafer manufacturing, equipment, materials, packaging and testing, controllers, and downstream applications.
This round of prosperity is not limited to the two IDMs. It is spreading outward through segments such as storage chip design, interface chips, modules, and branding, although the profit mechanisms of different enterprises vary.
Design Enterprises: Reaping Dual Dividends of "Price Increase + Product Upgrading"
While the manufacturing end provides strong support, local storage design enterprises (Fabless) are experiencing dual qualitative improvements in performance and product structure. In the fields of NOR Flash, EEPROM, and niche DRAM/NAND, local IC design enterprises represented by GigaDevice, Beijing Junzheng, Puya Semiconductor, and XMC are at a highly favorable intersection of cyclical recovery.
However, unlike the bulk DRAM and NAND markets, niche storage is not a completely homogeneous market. NOR Flash is mainly used for code storage in automotive electronics, industrial control, communication equipment, wearable devices, and consumer electronics; EEPROM is more commonly applied in parameter storage, camera modules, and automotive electronics; SLC NAND is concentrated in communication, industrial, security, and high-reliability applications; while niche DRAM customers mainly come from the automotive, industrial, medical, and consumer electronics sectors.
The supply-demand patterns, customer certification cycles, and price changes of different products are not synchronized. Therefore, even in the same upward cycle of the storage industry, the revenue, profit, and gross profit margin performance of various companies show obvious differentiation.
GigaDevice recently disclosed its performance for the first half of 2026, projecting operating revenue of 11.5 billion yuan, a 177% year-on-year increase; and attributable net profit of 6.9 billion yuan, a 1099% year-on-year surge. GigaDevice's core storage products include NOR Flash, SLC NAND, and niche DRAM, and it also has product lines such as MCUs, analog chips, and sensors. Compared with single-product storage manufacturers, this "storage + computing + analog" product portfolio can diversify the cyclical fluctuations of a single product to a certain extent, and enhance customer stickiness through coordinated sales of MCUs and memory.
GigaDevice's growth comes from three directions: first, the rising prices of storage chips directly improve product gross profit margins; second, the increasing sales volume of NOR Flash, SLC NAND, and niche DRAM expands revenue scale; third, the rising proportion of higher-capacity, more advanced process, and automotive-grade products drives continuous upgrading of the product structure.
The performance growth of several other enterprises in Q1 2026 has also accelerated significantly. In Q1 2026, Beijing Junzheng achieved operating revenue of 1.56 billion yuan, a 47.12% year-on-year increase; its attributable net profit reached 319 million yuan, a 331.61% year-on-year surge. Puya Semiconductor recorded operating revenue of 1.447 billion yuan in the first quarter, a 256.08% year-on-year increase, which is equivalent to about 62% of its full-year revenue in the previous year; its attributable net profit hit 251 million yuan, a 1259.87% year-on-year jump. The single-quarter revenue in Q1 2026 and the 251 million yuan attributable net profit have both exceeded the full-year level of about 208 million yuan in 2025.
Compared with GigaDevice, Beijing Junzheng's storage products have more distinct niche market attributes.
Through the acquisition of Beijing Silex and its subsidiary ISSI, Beijing Junzheng has established a storage product system covering DRAM, SRAM, and Flash, mainly serving markets such as automotive electronics, industrial control, medical equipment, and communications. These customers have higher requirements for reliability, long-term supply, and product lifecycle, with certification cycles significantly longer than ordinary consumer electronics. The advantages are long product lifecycles, stable customer relationships, and price fluctuations generally smaller than general-purpose memory; the disadvantage is that the transmission speed of industry recovery to performance is relatively slow.
Puya Semiconductor mainly focuses on NOR Flash and EEPROM, and extends to products such as MCUs and driver chips on this basis. Its products are more concentrated in markets including consumer electronics, mobile peripherals, wearable devices, camera modules, and smart homes. These markets are large in scale with rapid product iteration, but the price competition is also more intense, and they are more sensitive to changes in terminal demand and customer inventory.
In Q1 2026, the company achieved operating revenue of 1.447 billion yuan, a 256.08% year-on-year increase; its attributable net profit reached 251 million yuan, a 1259.87% year-on-year surge; its non-recurring profit deducted net profit hit 249 million yuan, a 1213.75% year-on-year jump. For comparison, Puya Semiconductor's full-year operating revenue in 2025 was about 2.32 billion yuan. The single-quarter revenue in Q1 2026 is equivalent to about 62% of the full-year revenue in the previous year; its 251 million yuan attributable net profit has exceeded the full-year level of about 208 million yuan in 2025.
XMC is one of the few domestic Fabless enterprises with multiple independent storage product lines, covering SLC NAND, NOR Flash, and DRAM, among which SLC NAND is its most representative product.
In Q1 2026, the company achieved operating revenue of 479 million yuan, a 236.95% year-on-year increase; its comprehensive gross profit margin reached 53.17%, a significant increase compared with the same period of the previous year and the previous quarter; its attributable net profit was about 146 million yuan, realizing a remarkable turnaround from the loss in the same period last year; its total profit reached 153 million yuan, an increase of about 219 million yuan year-on-year. The company attributed its performance growth to the storage chip industry entering an upward cycle, with continuous recovery in product sales volume and prices. In recent years, some international manufacturers have gradually scaled back their SLC NAND and other mature storage product lines, investing more production capacity in high-capacity 3D NAND and AI-related products, which has provided opportunities for local manufacturers such as XMC to expand their market share.
Module Enterprises: Advancing into High-Barrier Industrial Chains
Module enterprises are among the groups with the greatest profit elasticity in this cycle.
For a long time, the storage module industry has been regarded as the segment with the lowest technical barriers and profit margins in the entire industrial chain. Under the traditional model, enterprises mainly purchase DRAM and NAND Flash particles from original manufacturers such as Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, and Kioxia, then complete PCB design, packaging and testing, firmware adaptation, and module assembly, before finally selling to PC, mobile phone, server, and industrial customers.
This business model determines that module enterprises have long had two inherent shortcomings. On one hand, they are highly sensitive to the upstream particle prices. When particle prices rise, procurement costs increase rapidly; when prices fall, they have to face the risk of inventory impairment. On the other hand, they are highly dependent on international original manufacturers. Particle supply, delivery cycles, and product roadmaps are almost all controlled by companies such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. Therefore, for a long period of time, the market has been more willing to regard module enterprises as "distributors" or "assembly plants" rather than semiconductor companies with core competitiveness.
However, domestic module enterprises including Longsys, Biwin Storage, and Demingli are extending their business to controllers, firmware, packaging and testing, and enterprise-class storage, and as a result, they have achieved varying degrees of revenue and profit growth.
The release of inventory value in this round has become an important source of profit growth for Longsys. It is projected to achieve operating revenue of 22 billion to 25 billion yuan in H1 2026, a 115.8% to 145.2% year-on-year increase; its attributable net profit is expected to reach 9.2 billion to 11 billion yuan, compared with only about 200 million yuan in the same period last year, with the profit scale exceeding the sum of multiple previous years.
Biwin Storage has achieved high growth due to breakthroughs in the high-end market. In Q1 2026, the company achieved operating revenue of about 4.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 220%; its attributable net profit exceeded 600 million yuan, a year-on-year surge of more than 900%. The company stated that the continuous volume growth of high-value enterprise-class SSDs, embedded storage, and AI terminal-related products is an important factor driving the simultaneous growth of revenue and profits.
Demingli has maintained its rapid growth over the past two years. In Q1 2026, the company's operating revenue exceeded 3.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 180%; its attributable net profit grew by more than 500% year-on-year. Different from the traditional consumer-grade SSD business, the company has continuously expanded its layout of enterprise-class SSDs, automotive-grade storage, and industrial storage products in recent years, with the proportion of high-gross-margin products continuously increasing.
China's storage module enterprises are breaking away from the business model of "buying particles, doing assembly, and competing through distribution channels", and beginning to vertically integrate into controllers, firmware, packaging and testing, branding, and enterprise-class storage.
Interfaces and Supporting Segments: High-Threshold Tracks Riding the "DDR5 + AI" Upgrading Wave
Apart from storage particles, chip design, and modules, memory interface, clock, power management, and high-speed interconnection chips are becoming another easily overlooked but extremely high-technical-barrier beneficiary segment in this round of storage prosperity.
Lantsun Technology is the most representative domestic beneficiary. In Q1 2026, the company achieved operating revenue of 1.461 billion yuan, a 19.51% year-on-year increase; its attributable net profit reached 847 million yuan, a 61.30% year-on-year surge; its comprehensive gross profit margin further increased to 69.8%, up 9.3 percentage points year-on-year. Among them, the gross profit margin of interconnection chips reached 71.5%, hitting a new high in recent years. The company's four new interconnection products — MRCD/MDB, CKD, PCIe Retimer, and CXL MXC — collectively generated revenue of 269 million yuan, a 93.8% year-on-year increase, accounting for nearly 20% of the revenue from interconnection chips, indicating that the upgrading of AI servers and DDR5 has begun to drive new products into the rapid volume growth phase.
The market size of memory interface and high-speed interconnection chips is smaller than that of DRAM and NAND particles, but they have higher technical concentration. This round of storage super cycle has raised the prices of particles, while the upgrading of DDR5 and AI architectures is increasing the value of memory interface and high-speed interconnection chips in the entire system.
Conclusion
In summary, it can be seen that China's storage industry has become an "ecosystem cluster" that is fully interconnected from wafer manufacturing, IC design, independent controller R&D, advanced packaging and testing, module manufacturing to core supporting chips.
The global storage super cycle is like a huge gust of wind