In a move that underscores the intense supply chain pressures created by the global artificial intelligence boom, Chinese memory module maker Biwin has signed a massive two-year agreement worth US$1.86 billion (12.6 billion yuan) to secure enterprise-grade flash memory chips. The deal, which exceeds the company’s entire 2025 annual revenue, highlights the extraordinary lengths to which Chinese hardware providers are going to lock in critical components as AI workloads drive unprecedented demand for high-performance storage.
Shenzhen-based Biwin, whose shares are traded on the Shanghai Star Market, disclosed the agreement in a mandatory filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The locked-volume, locked-price contract covers the period from the third quarter of 2026 through the second quarter of 2028. The identity of the chip supplier was not disclosed due to commercial confidentiality requirements.
The AI Storage Crunch
The sheer scale of the procurement reflects the explosive growth of Biwin’s enterprise storage business, which expanded by more than 300% in 2025. The company’s products have successfully entered the core supply chains of major OEMs, AI server producers, and leading internet companies in China, positioning it as a key link in the country’s rapidly expanding AI infrastructure.
Biwin does not manufacture chips itself; rather, it designs, packages, tests, and sells storage products using memory chips sourced from major foundries. The 2026 purchase volume under the new agreement represents 4.45% of Biwin’s total NAND flash procurement in 2025, but that figure is set to rise sharply to 14.88% in 2027, indicating aggressive growth projections and confidence in sustained demand.
The deal comes amid a broader tightening of the global memory supply. The massive computational requirements of AI training and inference are fueling intense demand not just for advanced GPUs, but also for enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs), high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and server DRAM. AI workloads are particularly storage-intensive, requiring rapid access to vast datasets during training and low-latency retrieval during inference.
A Booming Global Memory Market
According to research firm TrendForce, revenue for the world’s five largest NAND brands jumped 83.7% quarter-on-quarter to $38.9 billion in the first quarter of 2026. Samsung, the market leader, saw its NAND revenue surge 104.7% to $13.5 billion, while competitors SK Hynix, Kioxia, Micron, and SanDisk also posted significant gains. The across-the-board growth confirms that the AI-driven demand surge is not a niche phenomenon but a structural shift reshaping the entire memory industry.
For Chinese companies like Biwin, this boom is particularly significant. As domestic tech giants build out massive AI computing clusters, the demand for high-capacity, high-speed storage is expected to remain robust for years to come. The growth of China’s domestic AI infrastructure, partly driven by the need to reduce reliance on foreign hardware following US export controls, is creating a captive market for domestic storage providers.
Financial Turnaround
For Biwin, the AI-driven demand has fueled a dramatic financial turnaround. The company’s revenue in the first quarter of 2026 jumped 341.5% year on year to 6.81 billion yuan. More importantly, it posted a net profit of 2.9 billion yuan, reversing a loss from the previous year. In 2025, Biwin’s total revenue reached 11.3 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion).
The $1.86 billion procurement deal is a massive bet on the continued expansion of China’s AI infrastructure. By locking in volume and pricing for the next two years, Biwin aims to insulate itself from the volatility of the memory market, ensuring it can meet the demands of its AI server clients even as global supply remains constrained. It also signals to the market that the company’s management is highly confident in the sustainability of current demand levels.
The NAND Landscape in China
Biwin’s procurement deal also reflects a broader shift in China’s NAND flash memory supply chain. While the country has historically been heavily dependent on foreign suppliers, primarily Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, domestic producers are rapidly scaling up. YMTC, China’s leading NAND manufacturer, has been aggressively expanding its 3D NAND capacity, and its products are increasingly being qualified for use in enterprise SSDs and AI server applications. For companies like Biwin, the ability to source from both domestic and international suppliers provides a degree of supply chain resilience that was not available just a few years ago.
This diversification is particularly important given the ongoing US-China technology competition, which has introduced uncertainty into the availability of foreign memory chips. By locking in multi-year supply agreements and cultivating relationships with multiple vendors, Biwin is hedging against future supply disruptions.
Strategic Implications
The scale of Biwin’s commitment reflects a broader trend among Chinese technology companies: the willingness to make long-term, large-scale supply chain commitments to secure competitive advantage in the AI era. As YMTC and CXMT continue to expand their domestic memory chip production, Chinese storage companies like Biwin are positioning themselves to benefit from both the growth of domestic supply and the insatiable demand from AI infrastructure customers.
The deal also highlights the increasingly strategic nature of the memory market amid the US-China technology competition. As Western governments scrutinize Chinese access to advanced chips, securing reliable, high-volume memory supply chains is becoming a critical competitive differentiator for Chinese AI companies.