The seller’s terms
Huawei raised its newest AI accelerator by up to half in two months, because it cannot buy the memory
Huawei now quotes its Ascend 950DT above ¥250,000, about $37,255, Reuters reported on 10 September. That is between 20 and 50 per cent more than it quoted customers two months ago. The constraint is memory, not the chip. Since Washington restricted exports of advanced high-bandwidth memory to China in December 2024, Chinese chipmakers have bought HBM, the stacked memory packaged beside an accelerator’s compute die, through grey-market channels at several times the price paid outside China.
Older parts moved too. The 950PR went from about ¥60,000 at the start of the year to more than ¥80,000, and Cambricon repriced its coming 690 between 20 and 30 per cent above the level it had quoted two months earlier. Every figure comes from people familiar with the matter; Huawei and Cambricon declined to comment.
What it changes If a deployment plan assumes Ascend or Cambricon parts at spring prices, re-quote it before committing. The input that moved is memory supply, not fab capacity.
Reuters sourced the Huawei prices to three people familiar with the matter and Cambricon’s to two. Read in a syndicated copy; the reuters.com original was not reached.
China’s AI chipmakers raise prices as high-bandwidth memory shortage bites