Catenaa, Tuesday, October 13, 2026- Global chip stocks fell Tuesday after China’s CXMT announced progress on a new chip structure.
According to CNBC, SK Hynix shares tumbled more than 10% in Seoul, while Samsung Electronics stock dropped 7.4%, with both stocks touching their weakest points since August.
South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index fell 5.5%. Micron stock fell about 4.8% in the US. SanDisk shares fell 4%, Seagate fell 2.2%, and Western Digital fell 2.3%.
In Japan, SoftBank Group stock sank 8.5%, while chipmaking equipment supplier Tokyo Electron fell 7.2% and semiconductor testing equipment maker Advantest declined 2.9%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.8%. European chip stocks also fell, with ASML down 3.3% and STMicroelectronics and Infineon both down 5%.
CNBC reported that CXMT, China’s leading rival to Micron and South Korean heavyweights SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, announced significant progress in developing a new chip architecture designed to increase memory density by packing more data into a smaller space.
Quartz reported that CXMT’s 4F² architecture is designed to reduce the area each memory cell occupies. In semiconductor design, F represents the minimum feature size, with the proposed structure using an area equivalent to four times its square.
Analysts broadly see CXMT trailing the US and South Korean memory leaders, so any advancement from the Chinese firm could add more competition to the market leaders, CNBC said.
Phillip Wool, chief market strategist at Rayliant Global Advisors, told CNBC that CXMT’s announcement represented progress for China’s semiconductor industry but did not necessarily justify the scale of the market reaction. He noted that the company had yet to demonstrate large-scale production capabilities and remained significantly smaller than established memory chip manufacturers.
“More importantly, we’re not even talking about HBM here, and the Korean chipmakers are still unquestionably dominating that space, with very little threat at all from the likes of CXMT or anyone else for the foreseeable future,” Wool told CNBC.
UBP senior equity adviser Vey-Sern Ling told CNBC that profit-taking in AI-related shares may have contributed to the sell-off. He also said Chinese manufacturers remain behind established competitors in advanced memory technologies, including HBM.
