Nvidia's powerful B300 AI servers are commanding astronomical prices in China, reaching a staggering $1 million per unit. This price tag is nearly double what they cost in the US, reflecting a severe scarcity driven by a confluence of factors, including tightened US export controls and a crackdown on unofficial supply channels.
The surge in prices, from around 4 million yuan late last year to 7 million yuan ($1 million) today, is directly linked to the arrest of a Supermicro co-founder, which effectively choked off the grey market that Chinese AI companies had relied upon to acquire restricted hardware. This has forced businesses to scramble for limited available units, driving up both sale and rental prices. Short-term rentals are reportedly fetching as much as 190,000 yuan per month, underscoring the intense demand and limited supply.
Chinese tech firms are eager to get their hands on this hardware to power their AI models and improve inference efficiency, a crucial factor in the rapidly expanding commercial AI landscape. Many are also actively structuring their acquisitions to avoid holding the restricted Nvidia hardware on their balance sheets, fearing potential repercussions from US sanctions. The recent indictment of Supermicro's co-founder for allegedly conspiring to divert billions worth of servers containing Nvidia's export-controlled chips to China highlights the lengths to which illicit supply chains have gone and the increased enforcement risk associated with them.
This scarcity is further exacerbated by previous US restrictions on Nvidia's H20 chips, which were designed as a China-compliant alternative. The inability to access either the H20 through official channels or the B300 through the disrupted grey market has created a perfect storm, pushing prices to unprecedented levels. With new legislation in the US aiming to further restrict chip equipment sales to China, the situation is likely to intensify, making advanced AI compute even more expensive and difficult to obtain for Chinese companies.
Fuente Original: https://thenextweb.com/news/nvidia-b300-server-1-million-china-export-controls
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