Chinese AI chipmakers raise prices as high-bandwidth memory scarcity intensifies, driven by global GPU demand.

Chinese AI chipmakers including Huawei Technologies and Cambricon have sharply raised prices for current and next-generation AI processors, as soaring costs for high-bandwidth memory squeeze efforts to build domestic alternatives to Nvidia.

Huawei has lifted its Ascend 950DT accelerator card—which integrates an AI processor with memory and other components—to above 250,000 yuan (HK$292,295.1). This represents a jump of 20 to 50 percent from prices quoted to customers just two months ago, depending on contract terms. The company has publicly said the 950DT, its most advanced AI chip, will be available in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Beijing-based Cambricon has repriced its next-generation chip, tentatively called the 690, at 20 to 30 percent above levels indicated two months ago. Smaller rivals MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX have made similar increases.

Earlier-generation Huawei products have also climbed in price. The Ascend 950PR, which sold for roughly 60,000 yuan per card at the start of the year, now fetches more than 80,000 yuan—up about 30 percent. The older Ascend 910C board has risen to more than 110,000 yuan from about 90,000 yuan at the start of the year.

The price hikes reflect a worldwide shortage of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a crucial component for AI computing consisting of vertically stacked memory chips that allow processors to access vast amounts of data at high speeds. The advanced HBM market is dominated by South Korea's SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, and US-based Micron Technology.

Since Washington tightened controls on exports of certain advanced HBM products to China in December 2024, Chinese chipmakers have increasingly relied on grey-market channels to secure supplies. Such HBM typically costs several times what buyers outside China pay. Because memory accounts for a large share of an AI accelerator's production cost, the higher prices feed directly into finished cards.

Huawei has said the Ascend 950 series will use two proprietary HBM technologies: HiBL 1.0 for the 950PR and HiZQ 2.0 for the 950DT. The 950DT is built mainly for developing AI models and generating responses, while the 950PR processes user requests before they are passed to the model.

The shortage is forcing suppliers to reshuffle allocations. Iluvatar CoreX has doubled its shipments of graphics processing units to tech giant and TikTok developer ByteDance to 100,000 units this year, and has diverted GPUs earmarked for internal use to help meet ByteDance's needs. Huawei is ByteDance's largest domestic supplier, followed by Cambricon and Iluvatar CoreX. Cambricon has not formally launched the 690; its current flagship is the 590.

The price hikes increase the cost of building AI computing capacity and highlight a growing bottleneck for Chinese chipmakers, who have benefited from a void in China's US$50 billion AI chip market after US export controls restricted the country's access to Nvidia's most advanced processors.