China's YMTC cracks top-3 NAND makers as AI demand reshapes market

YMTC has become the world's third-largest NAND flash maker with 14% market share, behind Samsung (25%) and SK hynix (22%), and ahead of Micron. The report attributes the shift partly to AI servers, which now account for 48% of all flash storage demand.

Why it matters: It's a concrete data point on how AI infrastructure spending is reshaping the memory-chip market and giving Chinese suppliers an opening, relevant to the same export-control debates playing out over GPUs and optical components. Rising AI-driven flash demand could also tighten supply and push storage costs up across the industry.