The price of the A800 chip from AI chip giant NVIDIA, sold in the Chinese market, has recently seen a significant increase.
Recently, a NVIDIA representative at an agency in China mentioned to The Paper reporters that the price of the NVIDIA A800 chip changes daily. If the purchase volume is large, it could be over 100,000 yuan per chip, but without 110,000 yuan per chip, it's impossible to secure any. With the rumors of a sales ban, everyone has been more cautious about selling, leading to a price increase of 20%-30% over the past week or so.
According to a Wall Street Journal report at the end of June, the U.S. Department of Commerce may act as early as early July, prohibiting chip manufacturers like NVIDIA from exporting chips to customers in China and other relevant countries without obtaining a license in advance. Experts interviewed by Global Times believe that the United States is taking this action as a manifestation of its "national security first" stance, aiming to defeat China in the technology field. However, this could not only harm Sino-US relations but also bring no benefits to the U.S.
It is widely believed that the A800 chip, which NVIDIA specifically supplies to China, will also be banned from sale without a license. The A800 is a graphics card (GPU) chip specially introduced by NVIDIA for China in the third quarter of 2022.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang once said that "in the long run, if restrictions on selling our data center graphics processing units (GPUs) to China are implemented, it would lead to the permanent loss of the opportunity to compete and lead in one of the world's largest markets for the U.S. industry, and would affect our future business and financial performance."
However, the NVIDIA A800 series chips have been facing a shortage of supply in the Chinese market. This year, at the MWC Shanghai exhibition, Lenovo Group showcased high-end servers equipped with NVIDIA A800 chips at a prominent location. Relevant personnel told The Paper reporters that the supply of this server is very tight and placing an order now would require around 10 months to be fulfilled. He Ning, Vice President of New H3C Group and General Manager of the Operator Business Department, also mentioned during an interview at the exhibition that the supply of high-end servers equipped with NVIDIA chips is indeed very tight, with the delivery cycle around 30 weeks.
However, the aforementioned NVIDIA representative stated that there are still some in-stock items available, and they can supply if the quantity is not large. It is suggested to buy sooner as prices will only get higher.
In an interview with The Paper, the founder and CEO of the new chip distribution platform "Chip Superman," known as Sister Hua, said that due to the rumors of a possible sales ban, the price of the NVIDIA A800 chip has indeed been rising recently, but there are still some inventories for the market to purchase.
This year, the continuous release of various large models such as ChatGPT, which require a large number of AI chips for training, has boosted NVIDIA's AI chip shipments and helped NVIDIA's total market value reach $1 trillion. As of the pre-market trading on the 10th, NVIDIA's stock was slightly up by 0.4% at $426.75.
