Demand for banned Nvidia chips is pushing black market prices sharply higher in China, with servers running the hardware more than doubling in price in six months, according to a Financial Times report based on conversations with chip traders in the country. One example is Nvidia’s DGX B300 server, which contains eight Blackwell AI chips, now selling for $1.2 million, compared with about $400,000 in the United States.
A workstation model, the RTX 6000 Pro, popular with startups building large language models, cost about $7,350 in January and now sells in China for more than $19,000. Both products are banned from sale in China under U.S. export restrictions on advanced chips. One trader told the Financial Times that the loopholes are closing, saying, “It’s getting more and more dangerous for middlemen to trade these chips, and prices have surged.”
Other traders said investigations into illegal chip trafficking launched by U.S. authorities at the end of 2025 have significantly disrupted the black market. In response, traders and buyers have turned to a wider range of Nvidia products, including gaming processors that can be adapted for AI work, and older Nvidia AI chips such as the A100. A trader said, “The A100 stock is running out very quickly. Companies have no choice but to buy the older chips.”
Prices for those older chips jumped from $29,400 at the end of 2025 to more than $88,000 today. Chinese companies are also being squeezed by soaring memory chip prices. One market source said, “Prices of all products have skyrocketed. A lot of people have reduced their demand at these prices. It has been a hard year.”
