Musk: China's Memory Chip Manufacturing Scale Often Exceeds Rest of World Combined

Shares of memory chip makers fell on Monday after reports of a technology breakthrough by China's ChangXin Memory Technologies, prompting Elon Musk to weigh in on X. Musk said that once China figures out how to manufacture a product, its ability to scale often exceeds that of the rest of the world combined.

Citing lithium batteries and solar panels as examples, Musk expressed concern about China's rapid progress in memory chips, noting that standard products like LP5 and LP6 RAM appear to be “getting solved quickly” by Chinese companies. He added that newer HBM architectures, SRAM layers beneath the logic layer, and 3D-stacked RAM with heat dissipation remain harder challenges.

During the weekend of October 10-11, ChangXin Memory president Cao Kanyu announced progress on a next-generation 4F² cell architecture, with plans to launch DDR5 server memory based on it by the end of 2026. The design targets high-capacity memory modules used in AI servers.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 2.7% on Monday, its lowest in three weeks, with Micron falling about 4%, SanDisk nearly 6%, and SK Hynix ADR and Super Micro both down over 4%, as investors worried that Chinese manufacturers could enter the high-end memory market at lower cost and larger scale.