Prices of Nvidia’s B300 server at 7 million yuan in China on US curbs: sources

[BEIJING] Strong demand for artificial intelligence computing equipment in China has nearly doubled prices for Nvidia’s B300 servers to about seven million yuan (S$1.3 million) each, industry sources said.

This comes as a crackdown on chip smuggling dries up black-market supply.

The prices of Nvidia’s most advanced and powerful server, critical for AI tasks, have climbed since early 2026, but rose sharply after the grey market, a key supply channel, came under pressure, the four sources added.

The price surge is also being driven by robust computing demand from Chinese technology companies, even as many avoid holding Nvidia hardware directly on their books for fear of exposure to US sanctions, the sources said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity as the matter is a sensitive one.

Responding to questions from Reuters, Nvidia said that the B300 was restricted from sale in China, and its partners needed to be committed to strict compliance.

“As systems become increasingly large and complex, unlawful diversion is a recipe for failure,” it warned. “Nvidia does not provide any service or support for such systems, and the enforcement mechanisms are rigorous and effective.”

Near-doubling of prices

A B300 server, which houses eight B300 GPUs, is priced at about US$550,000 in the US, up from around US$500,000 in 2025, two of the sources said.

The near-doubling of prices in China, from about four million yuan in 2025, reflects a scarcity premium driven by tighter US curbs on exports.

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It comes as Chinese tech giants scramble for the most cost-efficient hardware for generating tokens, the basic units of text processed by an AI model, to monetise their models and computing infrastructure.

The scarcity followed US authorities’ March prosecution of Liaw “Wally” Yih-Shyan, a co-founder of Nvidia partner Supermicro, the sources added.

Some companies, which found that the price rise has put purchases out of reach, are instead exploring options for rentals. They have risen as high as 190,000 yuan a month on a one-year short-term contract.

Chinese AI models nearly tripled their share of global token usage to 32 per cent in March 2026 from 5 per cent the year before, driven by advances in coding and agentic capabilities, Morgan Stanley said in a note.

MiniMax, Zhipu and Alibaba’s Qwen each reported token usage rising as much as six to sevenfolds in February and March against December, the US investment bank said.

Most powerful for AI tasks

Nvidia’s B300, packed with 288 GB of high-bandwidth memory, delivers 14 petaflops of computing power at FP4 precision, ranking it among the most powerful chips available for AI inference tasks.

Nvidia and partners, such as Supermicro, began shipping the chip in September 2025.

The uncertainty surrounding exports of H200 chips have also fuelled the recent surge in the price of B300.

Despite receiving approvals from both governments for exports, the H200 has yet to be shipped to China as the two sides remain at odds over the conditions governing its sale.

Tech giant Huawei and other Chinese AI chipmakers have moved to exploit this disagreement, as they seek to erode Nvidia’s market-leading share of 55 per cent in China, where competitor Advanced Micro Devices has a share of 4 per cent. REUTERS