China’s $6/Hour NVIDIA GPU Rentals Undercut US Pricing Amidst Chip Availability Surge

Chinese cloud providers are offering access to NVIDIA’s AI GPUs for just $6 an hour, nearly half the price of similar services in the US. Despite US sanctions, Chinese companies continue to acquire and rent these processors through global channels.

NVIDIA AI GPUs Available for $6/Hour in China

According to a recent revelation by WCCFTECH, Chinese AI engineers have been able to gain access to NVIDIA's processors through a network of global brokers that facilitate anonymous Bitcoin payments.

Interestingly, Chinese CSPs are already renting out their hardware stack, according to The Financial Times, and the costs are incredibly lower than what US corporations are giving.

China's Tiny Cloud Providers Offer AI Servers at $6/Hour

It has come to light that tiny cloud service providers in China offer organizations an AI server with eight NVIDIA A100 AI GPUs for as little as $6 per hour, a price that is approximately half as high as the identical configuration in the US, which would cost around $10.

Interestingly, rental prices in China are far lower than in other places because NVIDIA's H100 and A100 AI GPUs are widely available there, even though the US has restrictions on them.

An entrepreneur in China claims that over 100,000 of NVIDIA's H100 AI accelerators are in circulation, with many of them being sold openly on Xiaohongshu and Alibaba's Taobao. The small size of the chips makes them ideal for smuggling across China.

NVIDIA H100 Prices Drop in China After Biden’s Chip Ban

In China, NVIDIA's H100 is selling for $23,000 to $30,000. This is a significant decrease from its exorbitant black market price after the Biden government banned sales of the chip.

Beyond this, it's safe to assume that the sanctions haven't affected the markets much, as numerous Chinese enterprises are establishing overseas branches and purchasing NVIDIA's AI chips to circumvent US regulations.