Overview
- On Thursday, several Chinese vendors announced listed price increases of roughly 20%–50% for current and next‑generation accelerator cards as HBM costs surged.
- Huawei has lifted the indicated price for its top Ascend 950DT card to above 250,000 yuan and says the 950DT will ship in the fourth quarter of 2026.
- The tight supply of high‑bandwidth memory, a stacked chip critical for AI throughput, is concentrated at SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron and tightened after U.S. export curbs in December 2024.
- Companies are turning to higher‑cost, less reliable grey‑market HBM and reshuffling inventory to priority clients, with Iluvatar reporting doubled GPU shipments to ByteDance this year.
- The price jump and supply workarounds raise the cost and slow the rollout of China’s domestic AI infrastructure, making it harder and more expensive for local firms to scale away from Nvidia processors.