Nvidia Warns Customers of 15% Price Hikes on AI Servers Due to Soaring Memory Costs
Nvidia has informed its largest customers that prices for servers containing its AI chips will increase by over 15% in many cases, according to Bloomberg.
The price hikes will apply to Nvidia's Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems shipping early next year, affecting companies like Microsoft, Google, and Oracle that build servers under contract for large data center operators.
This is the latest example of the 'RAMageddon' gripping the DRAM market, with contract prices rising at record rates this year. Analysts project conventional DRAM contract prices will climb 58% to 63% quarter-over-quarter in Q2 2026, following a Q1 surge of 90% to 95%, as suppliers reallocate capacity toward HBM and server products.
Nvidia's AI systems require enormous memory loadouts, with the Rubin GPU shipping up to 288GB of HBM4 per package. The NVL72 rack-scale system combines 72 of these GPUs, putting over 20TB of HBM in a single rack before accounting for LPDDR attached to its Vera CPUs.