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<\/p>\nCXMT has sued the US Department of Defense in Washington seeking removal from the list identifying it as a Chinese military company, a designation that blocks defence contracts without restricting commercial sales. The company is the world\u2019s fourth-largest DRAM maker and passed Tencent this month to become China\u2019s most valuable listed company.<\/p>\n
CXMT has sued the US Department of Defense to get off a list naming it as a Chinese military company. The case was filed in Washington and names Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Bloomberg reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cCXMT is not a military company and has no affiliation with the Chinese military,<\/em>\u201d the Hefei chipmaker said in a statement. It says it designs chips for civilian and commercial use.<\/p>\n It was first designated in January 2025. The company briefly came off a version of the list in February and was put back on in June.<\/p>\n The designation does not stop anyone buying from it. A 1260H listing blocks defence contracts and flags a company to investors, TNW has reported before, without restricting private commercial sales.<\/p>\n The reason to sue anyway is what it precedes. Designation is widely read as a step towards the Entity List, which does restrict trade, and as a red flag to investors.<\/p>\n The company suing is not a minor one. CXMT is the world\u2019s fourth-largest DRAM maker, and it listed in Shanghai on 27 July at RMB 8.66 a share.<\/p>\n The shares opened 471% higher. Seventeen days later CXMT passed Tencent to become China\u2019s most valuable listed company, at about RMB 3.54 trillion.<\/p>\n Europe\u2019s exposure here is not to the list. It is to the price of memory, and to who is left making it.<\/p>\n Prices have quadrupled in three quarters as Samsung, SK hynix and Micron moved capacity towards AI data centres. App<\/a>le has been testing CXMT chips for devices sold in China.<\/p>\n Europe has no answer of that kind. There is no volume DRAM manufacturing in the bloc, which means every memory chip in a European product is imported from somewhere else.<\/p>\n Nor is there a European version of the Pentagon\u2019s list. American controls reach European supply chains anyway, as TNW found when China warned that the equipment chain would break for everyone.<\/p>\n So a European manufacturer buying CXMT memory carries American risk under no European rule. Nobody in Brussels has said whether that is acceptable, and nobody has been asked.<\/p>\n Which is the quiet part of a lawsuit about a list. The list is American, the memory is Chinese, and the bill arrives in euros.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our Technology category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n