China has failed tremendously in stopping its tech firms from using banned NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs that are being sold on the black market for double the price.
The US Banned NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs Because They Were Too Cutting Edge, & China Banned Them To Focus On Domestic Solutions, But Strong Demand From Tech Firms See Doubling of Prices In Black Market
The NVIDIA Blackwell GPU family has been entirely banned in China for AI workloads. The US Government banned them because Blackwell was a bit too cutting-edge, even limiting sales of the gamer-oriented RTX 5090 and relaunching a cut-down variant called the 5090 D V2, which even the Chinese don't want.
At the same time, the Chinese Government initiated a domestic-first policy, forcing its AI and tech firms to use domestically produced AI chips from the likes of Huawei. This led to various attempts to smuggle these AI-powerhouses into China through offshore routes. There have been attempts to catch the smugglers, and many have been arrested.
Despite all of this, NVIDIA's banned GPUs remain in strong demand within China. As per Financial Times, NVIDIA's Blackwell DGX and RTX GPUs are seeing massive demand, which has led black market sellers to double the prices.
As per the report, the NVIDIA DGX B300 platform, which houses eight DGX B300 GPUs and Intel Xeon chips with an astonishing 2.1 TB of GPU memory, is being sold for 8 million RMB, roughly $1.1m. That's up from its original price of 4 million RMB. The US pricing for the same system is $400,000.
Nvidia’s AI chips have more than doubled in price on China’s black market as a US crackdown on illicit exports collides with strong demand from Chinese companies. The price of the US tech giant’s flagship DGX B300 server has soared to more than Rmb8mn ($1.1mn) over the past six months, up from Rmb4mn, according to FT interviews with multiple Chinese chip traders. The system, which contains eight Blackwell graphics processing units, typically retails in the US at about $400,000.
via Financial Times
Even more interesting is the demand for NVIDIA's RTX 6000 PRO Blackwell, which has also seen price hikes in US markets, hitting up to $13,250 US. The same graphics card with 96 GB memory is now being sold for 130,000 RMB (roughly $20,000 US). The massive 96 GB memory makes it an ideal platform for entry-level AI firms, which is something that the 5090 32 GB nor the 5090 D V2 24 GB have on offer.
US lawmakers have placed a ban on exporting NVIDIA's Blackwell GPUs, such as GB200, GB300, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, and RTX 5090 to China. While the US Government did relax some laws on older GPUs, such as the H200, these are far older and way less performant than Blackwell at the prices they are being sold. At the same time, they are still capable enough to tackle Huawei's latest and greatest offerings due to a finer software stack.
Several traders said Chinese customers were increasingly buying a wider range of Nvidia hardware, including gaming processors that can be modified to run AI workloads and older generations of data centre equipment such as the A100 accelerator to work around the shortages.
via Financial Times
Even GPUs older than the Hopper generation, such as A100s and A200s, are seeing price bumps. With rampant demand, sellers are stating that they are running out of stock really quickly despite the prices reaching 600,000 RMB.
However, with export regulations tightening & China's customs authorities paying close attention to every server and chip landing in the country borders, things are getting tight for the black market sellers and also tech companies that have relied on NVIDIA's ecosystem for their needs, with no other option than to opt for domestic solutions.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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