Chinese AI chipmakers lift hardware prices over memory costs By Jeronimo Santos
3 min read
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On September 10, Chinese artificial intelligence chipmakers including Huawei Technologies and Cambricon increased prices for current and next-generation AI processors in China. Rising costs for high-bandwidth memory squeezed efforts to produce domestic substitutes for Nvidia hardware.
Huawei raised the indicated price of the Ascend 950DT accelerator card, which combines an AI processor with memory modules, to more than 250,000 yuan ($37,255).
The change marks an escalation between 20% and 50% compared to quotes issued two months ago. Shenzhen-based Huawei scheduled the release of the 950DT, its most capable AI chip, for the fourth quarter of 2026.
Beijing-based Cambricon lifted the price of its upcoming processor, tentatively designated the 690, between 20% and 30% above indications given two months ago. Smaller domestic developers MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX implemented comparable price adjustments. Neither firm specified the exact financial amounts of the adjustments.
People familiar with the adjustments withheld their names because corporate pricing terms remain private.
These upward revisions reflect how an international deficit of high-bandwidth memory affects Chinese computing manufacturers. Official directives in Beijing require local enterprises to replace Nvidia hardware with domestic components.
High-bandwidth memory serves as a vital element in AI calculations by stacking chips vertically to let processing units retrieve massive datasets at elevated rates. South Korean firms SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics lead the advanced memory sector alongside American manufacturer Micron Technology. These three producers dominate global fabrication of the specialized hardware.
Since Washington broadened export restrictions on specific advanced memory products heading to China in December 2024, Chinese semiconductor developers expanded their procurement through secondary grey-market channels to obtain the crucial components required for high-performance computing clusters and domestic infrastructure programs.
Gray-market memory imports regularly sell at several times the price paid by purchasers outside China. Because memory constitutes a substantial portion of overall production costs for AI accelerators, these inflated component prices translate into higher charges for finished hardware.
Huawei stated that the Ascend 950 line relies on two proprietary memory setups named HiBL 1.0 for the 950PR and HiZQ 2.0 for the 950DT, without disclosing fabrication locations or production partners.
Engineers designed the 950DT primarily to train AI models and synthesize answers. The companion 950PR card processes incoming user prompts before routing data to the main model.
Huawei, Cambricon, MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX did not reply to inquiries seeking comment.
Cost increases affect earlier generations of Huawei processors
Earlier hardware models produced by Huawei also experienced price jumps. The Ascend 950PR, traded near 60,000 yuan per board at the beginning of the year, reached over 80,000 yuan after a 30% increase.
The older Ascend 910C board rose to more than 110,000 yuan from an initial cost of approximately 90,000 yuan recorded earlier in the year.
The higher expenses elevate total budgets for constructing computing facilities and underline a worsening supply bottleneck for Chinese chipmakers. These suppliers previously filled market demand across China’s $50 billion AI chip industry after American sanctions blocked domestic access to advanced processors from Nvidia.
Supply constraints forced immediate reallocations.
Iluvatar CoreX doubled graphics processing unit deliveries to ByteDance to 100,000 units this year as processing bottlenecks intensified across the TikTok owner’s operations. The hardware helps train and deploy artificial intelligence architectures across data centers.
The chipmaker also reassigned graphics cards previously reserved for internal tasks to fulfill delivery commitments to ByteDance.
Cambricon has not officially released the 690 processor to commercial buyers. The firm continues to offer the 590 as its primary flagship component. Huawei serves as the primary domestic supplier for ByteDance, followed by Cambricon and Iluvatar CoreX.
ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment.
