US Government Reportedly Removed CXMT & YMTC from Restricted Chinese Tech Firm List

Last May, insiders alleged that the US Government Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) was eyeing up a handful of Chinese tech companies. At the time, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) was considered for inclusion within an extensive “export blacklist.” With the regional exit of more mainstream computer memory manufacturing companies, the likes of CXMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation (YMTC) are being tracked as the native Chinese industry’s leading lights. Earlier today, a revised Pentagon Section 1260H document seemed to no longer feature the aforementioned duo of memory and storage makers. Hours later, industry observers and journalists noticed that the updated list had been removed from public view. A fresh Reuters news article mentions the adding of Alibaba and Baidu to the latest edition of the US administration’s trade blacklist. Across the past few years, these gigantic tech players are best known for unprecedented large-scale purchases of AI-crunching hardware, mostly supplied by NVIDIA.

The US Department of War’s (DOW) Section 1260H document designates Chinese companies with (alleged) military or communist party connections. Last year’s addition of CXMT caused plenty of head scratching—the Hefei, Anhui-based memory chip manufacturer largely specializes in consumer-grade products. Earlier this month, Nikkei Asia divulged inside track information about ASUS, Acer, Dell, and HP’s supposed consideration of CXMT DDR5 and DDR4 lines. The apparent lifting of blacklist status could make it easier for Western OEMs to acquire DRAM from CXMT, and NAND from YMTC, although the latter still remains within the US Commerce Department’s sights (considered a threat to the region’s supply chain). CXMT’s recent advancement into mass production of HBM3 will (inevitably) elevate its local profile, but a reported collaboration with Huawei—involving the next-gen Ascend 950 AI accelerator—could attract extra Pentagon scrutiny.