High-performance Nvidia GPUs have become scarce in China’s black market, pushing the price of a B300 server to about 7 million yuan per unit, or roughly 160 million won.

On May 1 local time, online media outlet Gigazine reported that formal distribution of high-performance GPUs for data centres remains blocked because China does not allow imports even though the United States has partially eased export controls.

In China, companies including DeepSeek, Alibaba and Z.ai have begun developing AI models, boosting demand for high-performance GPUs. Companies and institutions have brought in and traded Nvidia products via third countries.

But these rerouted supplies also began to run short from January 2026. Four people familiar with the matter said that as of April 30, a B300 server traded in China’s black market at about 7 million yuan per unit, or about 1.5 billion won.

The U.S. government has barred Nvidia and AMD from selling to China semiconductors above certain performance levels, but changed its policy in January 2026 to allow deals if conditions are met. China’s government has not allowed imports, and formal exports and imports of high-performance data-centre GPUs such as the B300 had not begun at the time of writing.

Nvidia has not disclosed the B300’s official transaction price. It has been reported that in the United States it trades at about $550,000 per unit, or roughly 86 million won. In China, the same server is trading at about twice the U.S. price.

As Nvidia GPUs become harder to obtain, Chinese companies are also emerging. Cambricon Technology and MetaX are leading examples. Cambricon Technology’s first-quarter 2026 profit was 2.89 billion yuan, or about 623.8 billion won, up 185 percent from a year earlier.