Tech stocks plummeted on Tuesday after a Chinese memory chipmaker said it had made significant progress in developing new and more efficient designs.
ChangXin Memory Technologies, or CXMT, announced over the weekend it had made headway on new architecture which will increase memory density by packing more data into a smaller space.
The announcement spooked the market because CXMT is China's leading rival to global memory makers including Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung.
And, until a recent blockbuster IPO, it was little known outside of its home market.
Micron was down 3.7% in premarket trading, while SK Hynix's South Korean-listed shares closed 10% lower and Samsung Electronics fell 7.4%. Other memory-related stocks, including SanDisk, Seagate and Western Digital, were all lower.