Huawei quotes its top AI chip above 250,000 yuan as HBM stays scarce
Reuters reported Thursday, September 10, 2026 that Huawei raised the indicated Ascend 950DT price above 250,000 yuan, 20% to 50% in two months, as Cambricon, MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX also lifted AI-chip quotes on scarce high-bandwidth memory.
China's homegrown AI chips are being requoted higher before some of them have shipped, a sign that the shortage of high-bandwidth memory has reached the hardware Beijing is counting on to replace Nvidia.
Reuters reported Thursday that Huawei has lifted the indicated price of its Ascend 950DT accelerator card, which packages an AI processor with memory, to more than 250,000 yuan (about $37,255 at the news agency's conversion). That is 20% to 50% above quotes given to customers two months earlier, depending on contract terms, two people said. Huawei has said the 950DT, its most advanced AI chip, will become available in the fourth quarter of 2026. Huawei, Cambricon, MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
The pass-through is not confined to a single unreleased card. Beijing-based Cambricon, a listed AI-chip designer, has repriced its planned next-generation accelerator, tentatively called the 690, 20% to 30% above levels it indicated two months ago, two sources said. Smaller rivals MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX made similar increases. Cambricon has not formally launched the 690; its current flagship is the 590.
Older Huawei products have moved too. The Ascend 950PR, which sold for roughly 60,000 yuan a card at the start of the year, now fetches more than 80,000 yuan, up about 30%. The older Ascend 910C board has risen to more than 110,000 yuan from about 90,000 yuan at the start of the year. Huawei is ByteDance's largest domestic AI-chip supplier, followed by Cambricon and Iluvatar CoreX, three sources said. ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment.
HBM, export rules and the grey market
High-bandwidth memory is the stacked DRAM that sits beside an AI processor and feeds it data. Epoch AI, measuring component spending by Nvidia, AMD, Google, and Amazon, put HBM at 63% of those costs in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from 52% in the first quarter of 2024. Reuters tied Thursday's requotes to scarce HBM and said Chinese chipmakers have increasingly used grey-market suppliers, where the same memory can cost several times what buyers elsewhere pay.
That squeeze has a legal overlay. In December 2024 the U.S. Commerce Department added advanced HBM to China export controls, describing the chips as critical to AI training and inference at scale. The rules cover U.S.-origin HBM and certain foreign-produced HBM subject to U.S. jurisdiction. Thursday's report did not identify a lawful SK hynix, Samsung, or Micron channel for the specific memory inside these Chinese accelerators.
Domestic supply is not filling the gap at scale. Reuters reported on August 31, citing The Information, that ChangXin Memory Technologies had begun producing advanced HBM in small quantities. That is early output, not a qualified, high-volume alternative for Huawei or Cambricon. Huawei has said the Ascend 950 series will use two proprietary HBM technologies, HiBL 1.0 on the 950PR and HiZQ 2.0 on the 950DT, without saying where the memory is made.
The tightness is not a China-only story. TrendForce, in a July 9 note, forecast that server DRAM contract prices would rise 13% to 18% quarter over quarter in the third quarter of 2026 and said the market remained undersupplied. It expected customers without long-term supply agreements, and incremental tons sold outside those agreements, to bear more of the increase. In October 2025, SK hynix said all of its 2026 DRAM, HBM, and NAND output was sold out.
In January, Nvidia was quoting about $27,000 a chip on China-bound orders for its H200, a prior-generation data-center accelerator. Thursday's 950DT indication, about $37,255, sits above that January order price. Nvidia's figure is an indicated China-bound order price from January; Huawei's is an indicated card quote from Thursday.
Micron and the U.S. chip funds
Cambricon closed Thursday in Shanghai at 1,044 yuan, down 1.1%. SK hynix finished at 1.853 million won, down 0.16%; Samsung Electronics at 269,000 won, down 0.19%. U.S. cash markets were still closed Thursday morning Eastern. You do not own Huawei. What you are more likely to hold are the memory sellers: Micron is a 5.6% position in VanEck's fund of U.S.-listed semiconductor companies SMH and 9.1% in the iShares fund of the largest U.S.-listed semiconductor names SOXX. Micron closed Wednesday at $1,027.77, up 260% year to date. Nothing on Thursday repriced those funds.
What Thursday changes is the price of Beijing's substitute. The 950DT is being quoted as a more-than-250,000-yuan card while it is still scheduled for the fourth quarter, and older Ascend boards have already moved. China's Nvidia replacements now advertise the same memory constraint everyone else is paying for.
Frequently asked
Why are Chinese AI chips getting more expensive before they launch?
High-bandwidth memory is scarce, and Chinese chipmakers have increasingly bought it through grey-market suppliers where the same memory can cost several times what buyers elsewhere pay.
How does Huawei's price compare with Nvidia's?
The Ascend 950DT quote of about $37,255 sits above the roughly $27,000 a chip Nvidia was quoting on China-bound H200 orders in January.
Can China make its own HBM instead?
ChangXin Memory Technologies has begun producing advanced HBM in small quantities, which is early output rather than a qualified, high-volume alternative for Huawei or Cambricon.
Is the memory squeeze only a China problem?
No: TrendForce forecast server DRAM contract prices rising 13% to 18% quarter over quarter with the market still undersupplied, and SK hynix said its entire 2026 output was sold out.