Some of Nvidia Corp.’s biggest customers have been told that the prices of servers containing its artificial intelligence chips are going up more than 15% in many cases with memory chip costs soaring.
The price hikes will go into effect on systems shipped early next year and will impact systems including those with the flagship Vera Rubin and Grace Blackwell chips, according to people familiar with the process, who asked to not to be identified commenting on communications that haven’t yet been made public. The increases will depend on the generation of Nvidia chips and the memory configurations, they said.
Companies who build the servers under contract for large data center operators such as Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Oracle Corp. have recently notified their customers of the forthcoming increases, the people said. Nvidia representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The inability of the industry’s most dominant company to hold the line on prices or absorb growing costs shows how much leverage makers of memory chips – Samsung Electronics Co., SK Hynix Inc. and Micron Technology Inc. – have amid a surge in demand for AI infrastructure. Major technology companies including Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. have recently said they’ve been forced to charge more for their products because of chip shortages.
Nvidia’s accelerator processors are the heart of computers that create and run AI software. Their effectiveness depends on how much dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, they are paired with. The two Korean companies and Micron account for most of the world’s production of that type of chip. While they’ve been increasing output, they still haven’t caught up with surging demand. That’s driven the price of the commodity-like components up massively and given their manufacturers unprecedented influence in technology.
Nvidia is one of the most profitable companies in semiconductors. It’s able to charge tens of thousands of dollars per chip because supply — from contract manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. — still can’t meet runaway demand. The company has a gross margin, or percentage of sales remaining after deducting the cost of production, of 75%. Originally derived from PC gaming chips that sold for hundreds of dollars, AI accelerators have seen prices being driven up by incessant demand and, as yet, a dearth of viable alternatives for Nvidia’s offerings.
Nvidia has also raised prices for its gaming-oriented PC graphics cards, industry news site Tom’s Hardware reported earlier this month.
How Nvidia’s customers react to this latest move and whether it will create an opening for its competitors will likely depend on whether they’re able to secure enough memory themselves. Major customers like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta are all pursuing their own in-house chip programs but are still dependent on purchases from Nvidia for their data center build-outs. Their ability to push forward with greater independence will also depend on their access to supply from Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.
The price increases are also likely to add complexity to the industry’s massive AI data center build-out ambitions. Project delays, labor shortages, tightening capital markets and community resistance to developments have already complicated many plans.
Nvidia is reporting fiscal second-quarter earnings next week. The updates by the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company have become a key update for the technology industry and investors who have poured money into AI infrastructure on the promise that it will transform the economy.