Huawei, Cambricon Push Up AI Chip Prices as Much as 50% on HBM Crunch - finance.biggo.com

Chinese AI chipmakers, including Huawei and Cambricon, are sharply raising prices for both current and next-generation processors due to a global shortage of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is driv... Read original →

The shortage of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) is fundamentally reshaping China’s AI chip industry. With HBM supply dominated by South Korean and U.S. vendors, domestic firms are forced to rely on gray markets, significantly inflating production costs. Companies like Huawei and Cambricon have raised prices for chips such as the Ascend 950DT by 20% to 50%, highlighting how upstream bottlenecks are directly impacting downstream competitiveness. Although firms like CXMT have achieved small-scale HBM3E output, the supply gap remains acute. This price surge undermines the economic viability of domestic alternatives and reinforces reliance on foreign hardware such as Nvidia. If HBM supply constraints persist, China’s AI chip sector may face escalating costs and limited market expansion in the near term.