Western Digital dropped 6.5%, Seagate fell 6.1% and SanDisk lost 4.1% in early trading. The DRAM memory stock ETF was down 8.75% for the week and more than 17% since Sept. 22. The US declines followed a 5.46% closing loss for South Korea's Kospi.
China's CXMT plans to launch DDR5 server memory by the end of 2026 using a denser 4F² memory cell design, raising concerns about competition and pricing. Bloomberg described its breakthrough claim as unsubstantiated. The planned product targets conventional server memory rather than the high bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators. Elon Musk said Monday that China "seems to be solving fast" on LPDDR5 and LPDDR6 memory, while stacked HBM "will be harder to solve."