CXMT, China’s largest DRAM manufacturer, filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to overturn its designation on the Defense Department’s 1260H list of Chinese military companies. The complaint, submitted on August 28 local time, names U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as a co-defendant and argues that the listing was arbitrary, unsupported by evidence and contrary to due process. CXMT said it had sought reconsideration for more than a year after its initial listing in January 2025 without receiving a reasonable outcome. The company’s challenge follows legal actions by Xiaomi, Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. China, WuXi AppTec, Hesai Technology and Alibaba. CXMT’s case comes after the company announced mass production of LPDDR6 memory, with peak transfer rates of 12,800 Mbps and capacity of up to 16GB per chip. Reuters reported that CXMT’s first-half 2026 revenue rose 874% from a year earlier, making it the world’s fourth-largest DRAM maker. The 1260H designation does not itself freeze assets or ban ordinary commercial transactions, but it can restrict access to U.S. government supply chains and research funding while harming a company’s reputation. CXMT remains outside the Commerce Department’s Entity List, and Apple is seeking to procure its chips amid a global memory shortage, although the company is lobbying the White House for political approval and Apple’s reported talks with CXMT and YMTC have faced opposition from some U.S. senators.