Chinese AI Chip Prices Surge as HBM Supply Strains - 조선일보

Chinese AI chip prices have surged amid tightening supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a critical component for AI accelerators. Major players like Huawei have raised prices for their AI chips, wit... Read original →

The HBM supply crunch is fundamentally reshaping the Chinese AI chip industry's value chain. With U.S. export controls restricting advanced HBM access, domestic firms are forced to rely on inventory or black-market sources, driving up procurement costs. This directly impacts midstream AI chip designers, as evidenced by Huawei’s Ascend 950DT price hike of 60% over three months, with competitors like Cambricon following suit. Technologically, the bottleneck in HBM production constrains the full potential of 3nm AI accelerators, especially those relying on EUV lithography. From a compliance standpoint, Chinese firms face mounting pressure to meet growing data center demand while managing supply chain risks. In the short term, companies may mitigate this through architectural optimization and packaging improvements, but long-term reliance on domestic HBM production remains weak compared to global leaders like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. Without breakthroughs, this constraint will persistently limit the competitiveness and profitability of Chinese AI chips in the data center market.