Demand from Alibaba and Other Giants Boosts China’s Homegrown Memory Suppliers

Chinese tech heavyweights including Alibaba Group, ByteDance and Tencent Holdings are turning to domestic chipmakers to ease the pain from a deepening global shortage of memory chips, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The three companies are in talks to buy more standard memory chips—known as DRAM, or dynamic random-access memory, and NAND flash, which stores data long-term—from two Chinese companies to keep their data centers running. If completed, the deals could be a milestone for China’s memory chip industry, which has long been regarded as an also-ran behind the dominant South Korean and American chipmakers: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron Technology.