Chinese memory maker CXMT sues Pentagon to get off US list

CXMT 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’s fourth-largest DRAM maker and passed Tencent this month to become China’s most valuable listed company.

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.

“CXMT is not a military company and has no affiliation with the Chinese military,” the Hefei chipmaker said in a statement. It says it designs chips for civilian and commercial use.

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.

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.

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.

The company suing is not a minor one. CXMT is the world’s fourth-largest DRAM maker, and it listed in Shanghai on 27 July at RMB 8.66 a share.

The shares opened 471% higher. Seventeen days later CXMT passed Tencent to become China’s most valuable listed company, at about RMB 3.54 trillion.

Europe’s exposure here is not to the list. It is to the price of memory, and to who is left making it.

Prices have quadrupled in three quarters as Samsung, SK hynix and Micron moved capacity towards AI data centres. Apple has been testing CXMT chips for devices sold in China.

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.

Nor is there a European version of the Pentagon’s list. American controls reach European supply chains anyway, as TNW found when China warned that the equipment chain would break for everyone.

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.

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.