Nvidia’s memory costs soar 485%, latest AI systems now cost $7.8 million to build — memory now comprises 25% of the total cost, Rubin GPUs a mere $50,000 apiece

As prices of components are increasing rapidly due to high demand from the AI sector, the cost of these machines is also increasing significantly. Morgan Stanley Research estimates that a next-generation Vera Rubin-based VR200 NVL72 rack will cost major hyperscale cloud service providers (CSPs) around $7.8 million per unit (via @Aaronwei3n), which is tangibly more than about $4 million per GB300 NVL72. Furthermore, because every VR200 NVL72 rack packs plenty of DRAM and NAND, memory now accounts for around 25% of the total cost.

Nvidia plans to charge $55,000 per Rubin GPU and $5,000 per Vera CPU when selling them in volume inside VR200 NVL72 chassis to hyperscalers, according to Morgan Stanley. Although the upcoming VR200 NVL72 racks use the already familiar Oberon chassis, they use more sophisticated switching, networking, printed circuit board (PCB), cooling, power supply, and even chip packaging components, which increases bill-of-material (BOM) costs and eventually the price of the systems. As a result, each VR200 NVL72 will cost hyperscalers around $7.8 million, according to Morgan Stanley, which is higher than around $7 million we were told by one of our sources in late March. Meanwhile, the cost of memory within a VR200 NVL72 rack will be about $2 million, up 435% from the memory cost in GB300 NVL72, according to the same figures.