A Chinese province better known globally for its stunning mountain landscapes than its technology investments has this week joined the ranks of the biggest winners from the artificial intelligence boom.
Located in eastern China, the Anhui province is set to reap billions of dollars in nominal gains from its years-long bet on local memory chipmaker CXMT, whose shares soared more than 460 per cent in their Shanghai trading debut on July 27.
The blockbuster listing by the world’s fourth-largest maker of dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, chips has already earned it the status of China’s biggest listed firm onshore.
Anhui, through a network of entities such as the Hefei Industry Investment Holding Group, holds a stake of about 40 per cent in CXMT – the most for any shareholder group – according to Bloomberg calculations based on the chipmaker’s prospectus.
That investment would be worth around 1.3 trillion yuan (S$248.21 billion), based on CXMT’s valuation of 3.28 trillion yuan as at closing time on July 27.
“We expect the successful investment in CXMT to enhance capital markets’ confidence in Hefei and Anhui, improve the region’s refinancing environment, and channel more financial resources toward the area,” said Dan Li, head of analytics at S&P Global (China) Ratings.
The windfall is significant as it makes Anhui a notable exception among Chinese local governments, bolstering its finances at a time when many peers are grappling with challenges posed by a slowing economy, a property slump and heavy debt burdens.
To put it in context, the total value of outstanding bonds issued by Anhui’s local government and its financing vehicles stands at about 2.9 trillion yuan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Anhui’s investment in CXMT also positions the province as a prominent example of Beijing’s broader push to spur growth via emerging industries and steer capital toward sectors critical to China’s competitiveness in the global tech race.
“Hefei benefits from several unique advantages: a highly selective approach to industry development, a strong willingness to take measured risks in support of strategic sectors, and a notable degree of policy consistency over a long period of time,” said Davis Sun, a senior director at Fitch Ratings.
CXMT’s rise
Formerly known as ChangXin Memory Technologies, CXMT was established in 2016 in Hefei, the capital city of Anhui, when the local government partnered with US-trained chip veteran and GigaDevice Semiconductor founder Zhu Yiming for a DRAM project.
Much like its global peers Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology, the chipmaker’s business has boomed as a rapid buildout of AI infrastructure fuels an insatiable demand for semiconductors, lifting prices.
The firm raised as much as 66.6 billion yuan in its initial public offering, the second-biggest in China’s history after Agricultural Bank of China’s US$10 billion (S$12.92 billion) share sale in 2010.
Ahead of the IPO, its revenue jumped by more than 700 per cent to 50.8 billion yuan in the quarter ended March, while profit rose to more than 20 billion. That was versus a loss in the same period in 2025.
China’s local governments have built up mountains of debt after years helping towns and cities raise funds for a range of infrastructure projects, and regulators are now keen on curbing debt sales by municipal borrowers. Against such a backdrop, the nominal gains on its CXMT investment lend Anhui a valuable financial cushion while also creating capital that could be used to fund future industrial investments.
“The success of the CXMT investment extends well beyond financial returns,” said Li of S&P. “Its impact on industrial development, supply-chain clustering, and regional economic upgrading far exceeds that of a standalone investment project.”
E-mails sent to Heifei Industry Investment Holding and officials at Anhui local governments did not elicit a response. BLOOMBERG
