The Dark Satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn claiming that Google is snuffling around China’s CXMT for DRAM.
Memory chips are as rare as hen’s teeth, expensive and suddenly political enough to make procurement departments sweat. Now a rumour claims Google might buy DRAM from Chinese upstart CXMT as a hedge against Samsung, SK hynix and Micron.
According to X account SouthernValue, Google is evaluating DRAM procurement from Chinese vendors. Tipster Jukan reposted the claim, giving the rumour a little more oxygen than it probably deserved.
When asked for a source, SouthernValue replied with the terse answer: “[Google CEO] Sundar Pichai.” That would be quite the sourcing flex, and it leaves the whole thing firmly in rumour territory.
The target for any Chinese DRAM deal is not clear. It could be Pixel phones, AI-enabling TPUs or Google Cloud, each of which comes with different volumes and political headaches.
Pixel volumes are relatively modest, so that looks like the least dramatic option. Google Cloud would be more sensitive, because using Chinese memory in infrastructure would invite scrutiny from every Washington committee with a flag pin.
The more interesting guess is Google’s next-generation Humufish TPUs. The company is reportedly targeting 3.5 million units of those custom AI chips by the end of 2028, which would need a lot of memory.
CXMT is preparing for an IPO and expanding capacity from about 200,000 wafers a month to 300,000 wafers a month by the end of this year.
That gives Google a possible alternative to the memory big three. It would equally give Washington another excuse to rediscover national security concerns while pretending procurement spreadsheets are foreign policy.
Reuters recently reported that the US considered blacklisting DeepSeek, CXMT and about 100 other Chinese entities last year. It reportedly held off to “avoid escalating tensions with Beijing.”
The timing makes the rumour believable enough to be annoying. Memory scarcity has already pushed prices to the point where even the biggest buyers are grumbling in public.
That gives Google a fairly simple reason to look elsewhere at least. If Samsung, SK hynix and Micron can name their price, a hungry Chinese supplier suddenly looks less like a risk and more like leverage.
The awkward bit is that DRAM is no longer just another component. In the AI boom, memory supply decides who can build accelerators, who can scale cloud capacity and who gets to explain delays to investors.
A CXMT deal would not instantly break the memory market’s pecking order. But if Google even toys with it seriously, others may start asking why they are still waiting politely in the Samsung, SK hynix and Micron queue.
