Nvidia customers notified of AI-related price rises above 15%

Some of Nvidia’s biggest customers have been told that the prices of servers containing its artificial intelligence chips are going up more than 15 per cent in many cases with memory chip costs soaring.

The price rises 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 not to be identified commenting on communications that have not 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 centre operators such as Microsoft, Alphabet’s Google and Oracle have recently notified their customers of the forthcoming increases, the people said. Nvidia representatives did not 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, SK Hynix and Micron Technology – have amid a surge in demand for AI infrastructure.

Major technology companies including Apple and Qualcomm have recently said they have 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.