Strong demand for advanced artificial intelligence infrastructure in China has driven the price of Nvidia’s B300 server to around 7 million yuan ($1 million) per unit, industry sources said, as tightening US export restrictions and a crackdown on chip smuggling sharply reduce supply through unofficial channels. The surge marks nearly double the US price, highlighting the widening gap between official and grey-market access to cutting-edge AI hardware.
The B300 server, which contains eight high-performance B300 GPUs, is priced at about $550,000 in the United States, compared with roughly 4 million yuan late last year in China. Nvidia began shipping the system in September, and it is considered among the most powerful platforms for AI inference tasks, delivering 14 petaFLOPS of computing power at FP4 precision with 288 GB of high-bandwidth memory. However, sources said access in China has become increasingly constrained as US authorities intensify enforcement against illicit diversion routes, including the prosecution of a co-founder of Nvidia partner Supermicro.
Nvidia said the B300 is restricted from sale in China and emphasized that partners must comply strictly with export rules, warning that unlawful diversion undermines system integrity and support. Despite this, strong demand from Chinese technology companies—seeking high-efficiency hardware for token generation and AI model monetization—has kept pressure on limited supply. Some firms, wary of exposure to US sanctions, avoid directly holding Nvidia systems and instead rely on alternative access models.
The scarcity has also driven a surge in rental prices, with short-term contracts reportedly reaching as high as 190,000 yuan per month. Meanwhile, uncertainty surrounding other advanced chips, including the H200, has added further strain to supply expectations. Analysts note that Chinese AI usage is expanding rapidly, with token consumption rising sharply as firms such as MiniMax, Zhipu, and Alibaba’s Qwen scale up model capabilities. As US export controls tighten and grey-market channels weaken, the gap between global demand and accessible supply continues to widen, intensifying competition for the world’s most advanced AI computing systems.
