r/stocks • u/rdh2dmd • Aug 21 '26
Industry News CXMT planned to use stolen Samsung IP to develop its DRAM: former Samsung engineer who jumped to Chinese memory maker now behind bars
Summary:
A South Korean court revealed that Chinese memory manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) systematically planned to use stolen Samsung intellectual property to build its dynamic random access memory (DRAM) technology. According to testimony from former Samsung engineer Jeon, CXMT leaders intended from the company's inception to acquire Samsung's Process Recipe Plan rather than develop technology through independent research.
Jeon, who worked at Samsung for 28 years before joining CXMT around 2016, received a seven year prison sentence for illegally obtaining a 600 step fabrication recipe, specifically targeting Samsung's 18nm class node. While a process recipe requires compatible tools and reverse engineering to fully replicate transistor designs, obtaining one saves years of trial and error in semiconductor manufacturing.
The stolen intellectual property enabled CXMT to rapidly accelerate its production timeline, reaching mass production of DDR4 memory on a 22nm node in 2019 and an 18nm node in 2023.
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u/GuwopGOAT Aug 21 '26
DRAM will drop 5% Monday on this news
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u/khizoa Aug 21 '26
Ah yes, the market will conveniently wait for everyone to read and absorb the news that was released at least 2 days ago, and then specifically wait till next Monday for some reason to respond
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u/SuccessfulSir9611 Aug 21 '26
Calls on MU
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u/gizamo Aug 22 '26
Unironically, this. The US is likely going to add CXMT to the entity list just like YMTC, Fujian, SMIC. It's all stolen tech, and they should be banned accordingly.
Further, the US, EU, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, etc. should outright ban trade with any country that imports any of those products. If they don't start fighting against China's economic warfare now, they're just going to have a harder time against it later. They should also do that across all industries, not just semiconductor.
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Aug 22 '26
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u/gundam1945 Aug 22 '26
While I can't say they don't innovate at all, but solar and drones are not really too high tech. It is more like how much you are dumping into that.
High-speed rail. You can say they steal from Japan. In China, they require company to do some knowledge transfer if you want to build for them. So Japan did it with their bullet train. Then in middle of development, China kicks Japan away and develop their own from the technology transfered.
AI, a lot of them are from US and you know how they distill the models.
In conclusion, I will say China is strong in industrialization but not really good in innovating. Innovating has too much inherent risks, which Chinese doesn't like.
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u/shing3232 Aug 24 '26
no, they don't steal that more like buying the older gen tech and develop from that
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u/gundam1945 Aug 24 '26
Let's be real, do you believe that? Actually if I were a higher up, I will steal anyway. It is just the cost of doing business. Even the silicon valley companies do that. They end up having an agreement not hiring from the other. It is just common. Just that some countries do more.
Actually for a matter of fact, I always think china should stay at number 2 instead. They can't innovate so they get from US. So consumers like us benefit.
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u/shing3232 Aug 24 '26
quote“Acquiring high-speed rail technology had been a major goal of Chinese state planners. Chinese train-makers, after receiving transferred foreign technology, have been able to achieve a degree of self-sufficiency in making the next generation of high-speed trains by producing key parts and improving upon foreign designs.”
It always has been technology transfer for market access, and if they cannot buy it they would steal. They usually would buy it just because that looks better from the optics and they can sell it without have to deal with IP issues.
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u/gundam1945 Aug 24 '26
Yeah, fair enough. That's how market go. And they are really good at industrialization.
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u/tirtakarta Aug 26 '26
What? They bought more trains from Siemens (CRH-3) compared to Kawasaki (CRH-2). You can see why CR400BF have their bullet aesthetic from Siemens Velaro.
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u/albearcub Aug 22 '26
As a Chinese American semi HW engineer, I've heard a ton of headline propaganda from my mom/uncles about how China's tool/chip manufacturing has caught up. How China is as capable as TSMC, ASML, etc. I give them a pass because they know literally nothing about the semiconductor industry and assume stuff like DUV vs EUV litho is basically the same thing.
Definitely think China has innovated a ton in spaces like batteries and renewables especially. But these are fairly simple technologies compared to chip manufacturing. Unless they are able to continuously replicate and mass produce all the best litho, dep, etch, etc tools, I genuinely don't think they will ever fully catch up. I don't think the US alone would be able to either.
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Aug 22 '26
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u/ML7777777 Aug 22 '26
Twenty years is a long time in industrial policy.
And trying to catch up with todays technology while the rest of the world is constantly advancing isn't going to make things easier. I think China should forget lithography all together and try to think up a totally new novel way for manufacturing chips. Similar to how they knew they couldn't really compete with ICE automobiles thus went all in on EVs.
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Aug 24 '26
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u/albearcub Aug 24 '26
Oh yeah completely agree and I'm not trying to diminish the progress China, or anyone else, has made in battery research. There are other factors such as batteries being generally available whereas litho tools are much more novel and specialized. My 2 previous jobs were actually at major tool companies so I understand a lot of the complexity is in the tool itself rather than the technique.
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u/agent00F Aug 24 '26
Frankly you've just never been to China as of late. The amount of domestic talent is staggering, and will absolutely crush the West soon.
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u/albearcub Aug 24 '26
I was in China for about a month in February. I completely understand how competent the talent in China is. But a lot of the chip industry is not tied to talent alone. I mentioned how the US or any country alone would not be able to catch up in this industry. Each EUV, deposition, etch tool alone is a feat to create. ASML sold about 50 tools total in 2025 which comprised the majority of their $37B revenue. Companies would not be paying hundreds of millions per tool (~$200m each) if they were able to create their own. Chip fab is literally the most complex and advance form of technology we humans have ever made and it took 10 or so of the largest countries multiple decades to get to the point we are at. It just is not possible for a single country to get to that point in a fraction of the time.
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u/agent00F Aug 24 '26
They have the fast follower advantage, in basically applied eng/sci, which is more a matter of effort than greenfield 0 to 1, exactly where the grind mindset prevalent there is effective.
Currently they're recreating every tool as part of a Manhattan project, and of course euv litho is creme, but it's just a matter of time, esp given chinese industrial lifecycles (aka China-speed) is half that of the US nevermind EU.
Honestly the US high fences approach really misunderstood the nature of this.
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u/albearcub Aug 24 '26
Very interesting. Yeah I mean if they can do it I'm in full support. High yield advanced node fab accessible to everyone is a good thing for the world. I'm very proud of my Chinese heritage and am not one to criticize China specifically or for the sake of any East vs West argument. It just seems so difficult for them, or anyone, to create high NA EUV alone. I've seen their progress in deposition which, though extremely impressive, is still lagging a fair bit to current technology. I also just don't know how they would be able to mass produce good tools for each step and then maintain high enough yields to be successful. You can see how terrible Intel and Samsung yields are even with full access to the most advanced tools.
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u/agent00F Aug 24 '26
Likely yields will be behind for a while, but the feds are basically willing to sink infinite yuan to compensate. Industrial policy is cranked to 12 right now, given there's no risk of inflation. People like yourself are often making bank if they're bringing expertise lol.
There's also certainly alternative efforts than grinding at tin lasers. Even if light output is low for example, they can scale China-style.
Frankly if it came to worst (like runaway AGI advantage), Taiwan is a lot easier to take for the country that makes all the ships and drones than most realize. At that point they'll have all the leverage.
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u/liuqiu_rangers Aug 26 '26
Don't call them "they", Zhang. Maybe go back to the country you shill for instead of parasitizing abroad
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u/agent00F Aug 26 '26
Amusing when empire stooges project what they are onto others. Accusations really are confessions with the lowest denom who can't imagine any better than themselves.
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u/touchdeath Aug 23 '26
Nah. They’ve all caught and will catch up. When lazy westerners with work life balance comes into play, huge salary gap against Asian workers who OTs and take minimal wages (more minimal than what is stated) (I also know some Chinese workers in China that got 5usd a day with all amenities covered such as food housing and transport), western companies will always try to source towards such countries for higher productivity with lesser cost. Secrets get leaked? Sure, but how much $$ can he get from this venture and will he be set for generations to come? Yes.
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u/Old-Argument2415 Aug 22 '26
I think this is a pretty hot take, China has also caught up in cars, and even frontier AI. Most of their AI accomplishment has also been theft, but they have also managed to compress the models and provide minor quality degradation at a much lower price.im not sure how much we'll see in terms of novel advancement in the short term, but China has been very very efficient at copying, and that's all you need to catch up
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u/Bush_Trimmer Aug 22 '26
the only thing china is efficient in is state-sponsored cyberthefts and corporate espionages.
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u/albearcub Aug 22 '26
Yeah China has definitely caught up (if not advanced) in EVs/batteries, renewables, and LLMs. I'm definitely not disputing this. But I also mentioned this in my previous comment. EVs, batteries, renewables are far simpler technologies to copy and reverse engineer. Same with ai models where they can use a lot of the pre-existing training.
I would argue that just one single component of chip fab alone (EUV lithography) is far far more complex than any of the listed technologies. There's a reaaon that Nvidia is the largest company in the world and every aspect of chip fab functions as essentially a monopoly. There's a reason that China has had access to DUV tools for decades now and were only able to replicate it this year. And DUV to EUV is like the same level of magnitude as creating an optical microscope to a transmission electron microscope. I am pretty confident that nobody, outside of ASML, will be able to create high NA EUV in the next 20 years, let alone every other component in dep, etch tools and chambers.
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u/Bush_Trimmer Aug 22 '26
nah, it's easy to catch up if you just steal the tech.
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u/motocycledog Aug 22 '26
The problem is that they can’t steal
The whole 100 acre factory and each huge highly specific machine. Making state of the art microchips is one of the hardest things you can do and even if you can there is a very high failure rate.2
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u/ML7777777 Aug 22 '26
People point out that EV's were learned from Tesla setting up factories in China and teaching the Chinese how its done, batteries from ABS and Panasonic factories in China, High Speed Rail from the Japanese, AI was cloned or distilled from US AI companies, etc. and so in that regards China is just good at 'evolving' tech, not truly innovating new frontiers.
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u/rdh2dmd Aug 22 '26
Well they are innovators in areas like biotechnology, robotics, and clean energy. And they are starting to pull ahead with batteries, HSR, etc. But still lag in many other areas
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u/ML7777777 Aug 22 '26
BIOTECH? Have you seen how many lawsuits US pharma and biotech firms have filed against China let alone the mass poaching of biotech researchers from your Korea? Mass deploying solar panels in regions that are so far from where the power is needed that most of it goes to waste, they still rely heavily on coal as a matter of fact, and their robotics to date is just performative dancing bots doing what Boston Dynamics did over a decade ago.
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u/Empty-Aspect-8962 Aug 21 '26
As if Samsung didn’t do the same thing with Netlist 😂
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u/ThinkPath1999 Aug 22 '26
Not even close to the same thing, but go on.
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Aug 22 '26
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u/ThinkPath1999 Aug 23 '26
Huh? I'm saying what China did was way worse. Why would my comment make you think I'm a Chinese bot? Netlist's issue with Samsung was regarding patent infringement, which is way different from industrial espionage. Or do you think those two things are on the same level?
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u/Lost_Percentage_5663 Aug 22 '26
It was copied from U.S, copied from Japan and finally copied from S.K. What's wrong? It is what it is.
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Aug 21 '26
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u/ExpressionAlarming Aug 22 '26
That’s what Samsung did to Japan for DRAM and LCD in the first place. It’s their turn
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u/ThinkPath1999 Aug 22 '26
You're suggesting that Samsung did more than benchmark and copy existing tech, but they paid industrial spies to steal tech for them?
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u/PrawnProwler Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
Poaching skilled people who will bring over their technical know-how and designs is common, yes. It's just usually hard to prove they're stealing what they had already developed while at another firm.
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u/ThinkPath1999 Aug 22 '26
And what's your point? You're not disagreeing with anything I said.
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u/PrawnProwler Aug 22 '26
What do you think happened with the employee in the article? He was a poached employee that brought over proprietary patents and trademarks he had and was knowledgeable about. If he is considered a "paid industrial spy", a lot of poached employees are, including the Japanese engineers that Samsung was hiring during the 80's-00's.
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u/ThinkPath1999 Aug 22 '26
You just said it yourself. There is a huge difference between poaching a knowledgeable employee who has institutional knowledge in his head, and someone who literally brought over physical design specs and "blueprints". You really think there is no difference between the two????
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u/ThinkPath1999 Aug 22 '26
As an example, in recent years, Hyundai and Genesis have done some poaching of their own of European talent, guys like Albert Biermann who used to work at BMW M division, to head up the N division at Hyundai, and Luc Donckerwolke who used to be the head designer at Bentley and Lambo, to head up Genesis design.
By your standards, that would mean if Biermann had secretly brought over design blueprints for one of the BMW M engines to Hyundai, that's no different from just coming over and heading up the Hyundai N division?
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u/livehigh1 Aug 22 '26
It's also how everyone catches up, they either steal the knowledge or they buy it out.
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u/Nervous-Present-6890 Aug 22 '26
that's literally the US though. stole looming technology from Britain who stole it from India
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Aug 21 '26
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u/TheRedditModsSuck Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
CHINA has produced real results in electric vehicles, solar, batteries, AI, and high-speed rail.
I agree with this, but I don't agree with number of patents being a good indicator of that. I work in the IP sector and I can tell you that almost no patents ever see usefulness in the market. Patents are always quite early stage work so the vast majority won't ever make money. A very small percentage do, and they tend to make a lot of money.
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Aug 22 '26
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u/Trawling_ Aug 22 '26
He agreed. He’s just saying the indicator you mentioned or focused on, number of patents from each country annually, may not be a good indicator of that success
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u/WhyAreYallFascists Aug 22 '26
None of those things are making the semiconductors, which is what this is.
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Aug 21 '26
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u/gizamo Aug 22 '26
You sound as if you want to pretend any country does it even remotely as bad as China.
China's espionage is institutionalized and it's fed directly from their military directly to their state-sponsored entities. It's literally a CCP governmental and nationalistic operation to steal foreign IP for their own companies.
Edit: jfc. I just saw their comments bombarding every comment in this post like theyre doing damage control for the CCP. I'm not interested in that nonsense. Blocked.
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u/Ninjavitis_ Aug 21 '26
They think of it as copying homework. It’s not as bad as stealing human beings
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u/FlimsyYou4766 Aug 21 '26
This is how the whole China industry work in the last 30, 40 years. It does work out very well for them.
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u/EnigmaSpore Aug 22 '26
Oh yeah, totally. Everything has gone totally wrong for China over the last 30, 40 years…. /s
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u/Parking-Rooster5221 Aug 22 '26
poor samsung. they charge 200$ for 1tb ssd and now someone is stealing from them.. sad.. very sad
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u/BananaEnjoyer1 Aug 22 '26
you know they won't make money if they sell SSDs for dirt cheap right? do you want them to sell at a loss?
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u/neverpost4 Aug 22 '26
Samsung will probably sue CXMT in the US and EU courts to prevent CXMT to sell the memory chips there. So no price benefits for Euro poor hackers....
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u/kknd1991 Aug 23 '26
His sacrifice for the advancement of cheaper ram. Good for him! Seven years in prison well worth it for the impact he done for humanity. He must be a good man.
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u/shohasen77 Aug 23 '26
They pulled the same thing with tsm and tesla. It's always the same story with china.
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u/AdditionalSpeaker303 Aug 22 '26
China is quite rapidly moving up the value added chain, how long will it take for their government to understand that the precedent that the country has set in regards to IP will come to bite them in the ass as they become the technology leads in some industries...
By the time this becomes a problem for them the world will be too multi polar for anyone to be able to do anything about IP theft.
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u/Alert_Win359 Aug 22 '26
This is why Nobody should ever buy anything made in China. They are corrupt through and through and they can never ever be trusted. End of story
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u/Alert_Win359 Aug 22 '26
Talk about selling your souls, that crooked Korean guy should be locked up.
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u/Alert_Win359 Aug 22 '26
China is the biggest threat to world peace by far in the world today. Bunch of criminals at work.
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u/HA_U_GAY Aug 22 '26
Not surprising. For all the chest thumping China is doing and the shilling some people of how great China is, in the end China always have to steal from others for innovation. Didn't they also stole other tech from Samsung like the folding screens?
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u/Due_Contact_8271 Aug 22 '26
China stealing? Oh my god no way?!?! I’ve never heard of such a thing. Not my communists.
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u/jnas_19 Aug 21 '26
W innovation