Affected by the U.S. ban, NVIDIA's top-of-the-line AI chip, the H100, had seen a continuous surge in prices in the domestic market. However, recently, the spot price of AI servers equipped with the H100 in China has rapidly dropped by over 10%.
Despite the U.S. export ban on AI chips, some dealers have taken risks and hoarded H100 chips through certain special channels.
For example, there have been reports that transactions of H100 chips still exist in the Huaqiangbei Electronics Market in Shenzhen, but they have all gone underground, mainly introduced into the mainland through purchasing agents or overseas shell companies.
Therefore, some universities, research institutions, and companies in China can still obtain NVIDIA's AI chips through special dealer channels, but the supply is limited. This has also led to many scalpers speculating on price differentials.
The servers equipped with H100 (8 cards) were once priced at over 3 million yuan (over 420,000 US dollars) in China, which is about 50% higher than the official price of 280,000 to 300,000 US dollars. After factoring in logistics and customs costs, some middlemen could easily make profits exceeding 10%.
However, with the upcoming release of H200 in the second quarter of this year, H100 will become a "previous generation" product.
As a result, middlemen who had hoarded H100 are now eager to sell off their inventory, leading to a rapid decline in prices.
Recently, the black market prices for servers with H100 in mainland China have dropped to around 2.7 to 2.8 million yuan, while the spot prices in Hong Kong have fallen to about 2.6 million yuan, both experiencing a decrease of over 10%.
