Samsung Says China Stole 620 DRAM Steps. The Blueprints Tell a Different Story.

620 process steps

On July 27, 2026, CXMT listed on the STAR Market. It rose 465% at the open, reaching a market value of 3.28 trillion yuan and surpassing ICBC. First-day turnover was 141.2 billion yuan.

On the same day, at the Seoul Central District Court, Jeon, a former Samsung engineer, stood in the witness box and said CXMT had never intended to develop its own technology from the day it was founded in 2016. Prosecutors had an internal roadmap called “Project Hefei.” It listed 620 DRAM process steps. Equipment models, consumable specifications, supplier names, process parameters. Samsung spent five years and 1.6 trillion won developing this generation of 18nm process. Prosecutors said Jeon hand-copied the 620 process steps into a 12-page notebook and carried it out of Samsung.

Jeon was sentenced to seven years in April 2026.

The physics does not match.

In Qimonda’s DRAM, the capacitor is buried beneath the silicon surface. In Samsung’s DRAM, the capacitor stands above the silicon surface. One is called trench; the other, stack. In 2019, CXMT bought about 6,200 Qimonda patents and 2.8 TB of technical documentation from Canada’s Polaris Innovations. It bought blueprints for what lay underground.

Prosecutors say CXMT copied 600 of Samsung’s process steps. But 600 steps in a stack process correspond to a stack physical structure. Take blueprints for a building above ground and use them to build a house underground, and the first step does not match. CXMT’s R&D head is alleged to be a former Samsung DRAM R&D executive. But an R&D executive cannot carry away the physical adaptation of 600 process steps. What he can carry away is experience, judgment, and an understanding of how the industry works. In semiconductors, that is called “talent mobility,” not “theft.”

Prosecutors also said Samsung lost “at least several trillion won, and potentially 40 trillion won in the future.” CXMT’s revenue in the first half of 2026 was 150.3 billion yuan. Annualized at 300 billion yuan, 40 trillion won, about 200 billion yuan, is more than two-thirds of CXMT’s full-year revenue. When Samsung’s lawyer said that number in court, someone in the gallery glanced down at a phone.

A piece of paper across the Yellow Sea

A South Korean court sentenced Jeon to seven years. The last page of the verdict bears the seal of a South Korean court.

CXMT is in Hefei. Its fabs are in Hefei. Its capacity is in Hefei. Once that piece of paper crosses the Yellow Sea, it is just a piece of paper.

There is no international semiconductor court. There is no supranational arbitration body that can issue a globally binding ruling on “process theft.” South Korea’s criminal ruling ends at the limits of South Korean jurisdiction. If Samsung wants to pursue CXMT itself, its only path is a trade secret action at the US ITC or a civil suit in US federal court. But CXMT holds the Qimonda license. It was bought with real money in 2019. In a US court, that is a legal defense.

Samsung’s lawyers know this. That is why they put the battlefield in South Korea. A South Korean ruling can make headlines. Headlines can shape public opinion. Public opinion can influence customers. Customers can influence orders. It is a longer chain than the law. At the end of that chain is Apple’s procurement decision.

September 1

On September 1, 2026, South Korea’s revised Public Notice on the Export and Import of Strategic Items took effect. Lithography, etching, and deposition equipment were added to the list of strategic items. For a South Korean company to export an etcher to CXMT, it must first apply to the South Korean government for a license. The application form has a field: “Is the end user involved in DRAM manufacturing?”

CXMT’s procurement department has been filling in the answer to that field for ten years.

Export controls also accelerate the thing they are meant to slow. CXMT’s technical path, using mature lithography tools to bypass the EUV export ban, was itself forced into existence by sanctions. The tighter South Korea’s controls, the stronger the incentive for domestic equipment substitution. SMEE’s lithography tools, AMEC’s etchers, and Piotech’s deposition equipment appear on CXMT’s supplier list with a frequency proportional to the severity of South Korea’s export controls.

Apple is lobbying

Counterpoint data: in Q2 2026, CXMT’s share of global DRAM revenue rose from 4% a year earlier to 10%. Samsung 38%, SK Hynix 25%, Micron 24%. CXMT fourth.

DDR5 at up to 8,000 Mbps, 24Gb per die. LPDDR5X at up to 10,667 Mbps, package thickness 0.58 mm. Samsung’s LPDDR5X package thickness is 0.65 mm. CXMT is 0.07 mm thinner than Samsung. On a phone motherboard, 0.07 mm means the battery can gain 0.07 mm of thickness.

Apple is lobbying the US government. The iPhone supply chain needs a second DRAM supplier. Dell, HP, Asus, and Acer are considering it. Orders from Alibaba Cloud, ByteDance, Tencent, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Honor, OPPO, and vivo have already locked up CXMT’s capacity through the end of 2026. More than 80% of its 2027 capacity is booked.

Samsung is shifting capacity to HBM and server-grade DDR5. A supply gap has opened in standard DRAM. CXMT stepped into that gap. Samsung launched its IP lawsuit at precisely the moment that gap was widest.

20.6 billion yuan

From 2023 to 2025, CXMT invested a cumulative 20.605 billion yuan in R&D. That is 21.67% of revenue. Samsung’s R&D ratio over the same period was about 8%. SK Hynix about 9%. Micron about 10%.

By the end of 2025, CXMT held 6,972 patents in China and abroad. In 2024, it ranked 42nd globally in US patent grants and fourth among Chinese companies. Ten years ago, the company did not even have a fab.

From “buying patents to get in the door” to “international recognition,” CXMT took ten years. The 620-process-step allegation will not reset those ten years to zero. The challenge is this: once its cost advantage and capacity scale hit a ceiling, can CXMT outrun the patent walls of the Big Three in technology iteration?

That is not a question a courtroom can answer.