Chinese semiconductor firms including Huawei, Cambricon, MetaX, and Iluvatar CoreX have increased prices for current and future AI chips. According to Reuters, some products saw price hikes of up to 50 percent. Huawei raised the estimated cost of its Ascend 950DT card to over ¥250 000, which is 20 to 50 percent higher than quotes provided two months ago.
Cambricon has increased the price target for its upcoming processor, tentatively named 690, by 20 to 30 percent compared to levels from two months prior. Existing models have also seen price adjustments. The Huawei Ascend 950PR rose from approximately ¥60 000 to over ¥80 000, while the Ascend 910C increased from roughly ¥90 000 to more than ¥110 000 since the beginning of the year.
Industry sources attribute the price surge to a global shortage of high-bandwidth memory (HBM). Following US Department of Commerce restrictions on HBM shipments to China introduced on December 2, 2024, manufacturers have increasingly relied on the gray market, where components cost significantly more. This increase in production costs is directly impacting the final price of AI accelerators.
Supply chain dynamics are also shifting due to component scarcity. Iluvatar CoreX reportedly doubled its GPU shipments to ByteDance to 100 000 units for 2026, reallocating stock originally intended for internal use. Huawei remains the primary supplier of AI chips for ByteDance, followed by Cambricon and Iluvatar CoreX. Huawei previously committed to releasing new Ascend processors annually.
