A Chinese memory manufacturer, CXMT, established in June 2016 in Hefei with around $1.9 billion in public funding, has climbed to the fourth spot in the global memory market in under ten years. This rapid rise has drawn attention from the Korean judiciary, which is currently investigating how the company achieved such swift growth. According to prosecutors, two CXMT executives hired in August 2016—both with prior experience at Samsung—developed a strategy known as "Project Hefei." This plan included acquiring a critical document called the PRP (Process Recipe Plan), which outlines the complete manufacturing process for memory chips, by September 2016. The strategy also involved hiring key Samsung engineers in October 2016, completing research and development by July 2017, and beginning production in August 2018 at a rate of 10,000 wafers per month. In August 2016, CXMT reportedly tried to reconstruct Samsung's 18 nm process PRP using information from former Samsung employees, but this initial attempt failed. However, by September 2016, CXMT had obtained data containing the names and references of machines used by Samsung, enabling the company to draft its own PRP between September 23 and 26. A spreadsheet dated September 27, titled "summary of the 8 steps of the process," was created and shared among in-house specialists, all of whom had previously worked at Samsung. Prosecutors argue that these individuals could not have overlooked the source of the information, as the file included processes and writing styles unique to Samsung. The financial damage to Samsung is estimated by prosecutors to be at least several tens of thousands of billions of won by December 2025. Several convictions have already been issued, including a seven-year prison sentence for a former Samsung researcher who had manually copied parts of the PRP before joining CXMT. The Seoul Central Court is set to hear additional witnesses from the case until October, which could lead to further disclosures. Whether the trial results in convictions or not, the impact of CXMT's rise on the global price of RAM remains a topic of interest for economists and industry observers alike.