Its name is Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), a Chinese company that is expanding rapidly in a crucial corner of the chip market — so rapidly that it has just overtaken US giant Micron Technology.

YMTC has just beaten Micron and Kioxia in NAND chip shipments

According to data compiled by Counterpoint Research and published by CNBC, YMTC ranked third worldwide for NAND memory shipments in the second quarter of 2026, behind South Korean rivals Samsung and SK Hynix, but ahead of America’s Micron and Japan’s Kioxia. NAND sales account for roughly a quarter of Micron’s revenue.

This particular type of semiconductor stands out for its ability to retain data even when the devices it is installed in are switched off. Computer SSDs are a good example: when you save a photo or a file, that data is stored in the NAND. NAND chips are therefore genuine data-storage tools.

That said, they tend to be slower than DRAM memory, which operates at far higher speeds and carries a significantly higher cost. In Micron’s case, DRAM weighs much more heavily on revenue than NAND does, making up roughly three-quarters of the total.

The fact that China’s YMTC has nonetheless overtaken Micron marks an important milestone for China itself. To be precise, YMTC took third place in chip shipments, capturing a market share of 14% in the April-to-June period. It surpassed Japan’s Kioxia — which it had already beaten last year before being overtaken again in the following months.

The group’s next target: a 15% market share

MS Hwang, head of the research division at Counterpoint Research, commented on the news that YMTC’s shipments had beaten those of Micron and Kioxia, stressing his optimism about the group’s growth prospects:

«We expect YMTC to further extend its lead in 2027 and 2028. From that standpoint, the fact that YMTC reached third place this quarter carries significant weight in the competitive landscape.»

The group’s next target, according to Hwang, is a 15% market share — the minimum threshold that allows a memory maker to self-fund the capital expenditure it needs for future growth, at a time when interest in AI chips is running high.

But YMTC still trails Micron on revenue — and the IPO is awaited

One clarification is nonetheless in order: YMTC has beaten Micron and Kioxia on shipments, but not on the revenue earned from selling those same NAND chips. Counterpoint noted on this point that the Chinese group still sells its semiconductors mainly for consumer applications rather than into data centers — a market that is expected to absorb half of all available NAND by the end of 2026.

Even so, the fact that Yangtze Memory Technologies has overtaken Micron is significant, especially given that the company has filed a plan with the Shanghai Stock Exchange to go public. That exchange has, in recent weeks, witnessed a frenzy over the IPO of CXMT, a company focused instead on DRAM.

In the second quarter, CXMT held a 7% share of the DRAM market, ranking fourth behind Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung, the market leader, according to another Counterpoint report released earlier this month.

Counterpoint recalled that both the DRAM and NAND memory-chip markets hit record sales in the first quarter — nearly $100 billion and $46 billion respectively — noting that AI has become the decisive variable for NAND demand as well.

«As the AI paradigm shifts from training to inference, demand has risen rapidly for storage solutions capable of holding KV caches and datasets while delivering high speeds and low power consumption,» the report reads.

The forecasts are positive: enterprise SSDs (eSSDs — the archival storage in a server or data center) are estimated to absorb more than half of all NAND bits by the end of this year, a factor that has pushed the average selling prices (ASP) of consumer products to record levels.

Despite the progress in shipments, YMTC continues to lag Micron and Kioxia in terms of revenue derived from NAND chips, the research firm noted. Counterpoint also stressed that YMTC still sells NAND chips to companies making consumer electronics, rather than to those active in professional data-center storage.

In the meantime, anticipation is building around the launch of its IPO — all the more so after the frenzy that erupted over the market debut of CXMT, whose shares shot up as much as +500% during their first day of trading.

YMTC officially began its IPO process on May 19, 2026, filing documentation for a listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market. The date of its debut has not yet been set.

Editor’s note

This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Laura Naka Antonelli on August 13, 2026 as «YMTC, l’azienda cinese dei chip NAND ha appena battuto il colosso USA Micron. Attesa per l’IPO». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.