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China AI Chips Surge: HBM Shortage Fuels Price Hikes
10 Sep
Summary
- Chinese AI chipmakers significantly increased prices for processors.
- High-bandwidth memory shortage is driving up costs for domestic alternatives.
- Huawei's advanced AI chip price jumped 20-50% in two months.
Chinese AI chip manufacturers, including Huawei and Cambricon, have significantly raised prices for their current and upcoming AI processors. This surge is directly attributed to the escalating costs of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a critical component for AI computing.
Huawei's Ascend 950DT accelerator card, its most advanced AI chip, now has an indicated price exceeding 250,000 yuan ($37,255). This represents a 20% to 50% increase from prices quoted just two months prior.
Cambricon has also repriced its next-generation chip, the 690, with a 20% to 30% increase. These price hikes underscore the global HBM shortage, which is impacting China's efforts to build domestic alternatives to Nvidia's offerings.
The advanced HBM market is dominated by South Korean and U.S. manufacturers. Since December 2024, tighter U.S. export controls have forced Chinese chipmakers to rely on more expensive grey-market channels for HBM supplies.
Even older Huawei chips have seen price increases, with the Ascend 950PR now fetching over 80,000 yuan, a 30% rise. The Ascend 910C has also increased in price, highlighting a growing bottleneck for Chinese chipmakers in their pursuit of AI market share.
These increased costs are forcing suppliers to reallocate resources. For instance, Iluvatar CoreX has doubled its shipments of GPUs to ByteDance this year to meet demand, diverting chips from internal use.
