The sudden appearance and rise of DeepSeek earlier this year has clearly caused a second wave of interest for AI model training. This has led to a spike in both sales and prices for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs in China, with smugglers selling them at absurdly inflated prices.
To give a bit of background, DeepSeek came onto the scene at the start of the year, touting itself as a low-cost AI option at a time when companies were investing deeply into high-end, high-tech, and high-priced chips from the likes of NVIDIA. On that note, it also caused the green GPU brand to lose almost US$600 billion (~RM2.62 trillion) in market value in a single day.
DeepSeek Spurs Black Market Demand for Nvidia Gaming Chips in China
📈 The black market price of Nvidia's RTX 5090 gaming chip has skyrocketed by 150% in China. DeepSeek's popularity is driving this surge as companies seek affordable alternatives to expensive AI #chips.…
— The Information (@theinformation) March 5, 2025
According to a paywalled article by The Information, Chinese smugglers have been buying up as many RTX 50 Series GPUs, the RTX 5090 in particular, and selling them on the black market for as much as US$5,000 (~RM22,160). That’s basically a 150% markup from the card’s original price, which currently retails at an SRP of US$1,999 (~RM8,864).
Mind you, these are the full-fat RTX 5090 and not the 5090D variant. The difference between the two being the number of AI TOPS they have; the 5090 boasts 3,352 TOPS while the 5090D has 2,375 TOPS. And again, prospective buyers are companies who are looking to ride the DeepSeek wave and not so much gamers, although the latter is a driving force within China.
(Source: The Information via Hot Hardware)
