AI Hardware News

Product launches, GPU shortages, and market shifts tracked since October 2025.

March 2026

Mar 15
US revokes controversial AI Diffusion Framework export rule

Administration revokes the per-country GPU quota rule that would have mandated export limits on AI hardware by nation.

Mar 13
ByteDance to access 36,000 Blackwell GPU cluster through Malaysia

Chinese tech giant circumvents US export controls by accessing NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs through third-party Malaysian datacenter.

Mar 5
US considering new sweeping chip export controls

Potential new restrictions under consideration beyond existing China-focused AI hardware rules.

Mar 1
RTX 5090 prices reach $4,199 on Amazon — shortage persists

Up from $1,999 MSRP at launch. Meaningful retail availability not expected until Q3 2026.

February 2026

Feb 25
NVIDIA DGX Spark price hiked 18% to $4,699 as memory shortages bite

Founders Edition jumps $700 from $3,999 due to DRAM supply constraints driven by AI datacenter demand.

Feb 20
Tenstorrent downgrades Blackhole p150 from 140 to 120 tensor cores

Firmware update reduces cores on already-sold cards. Company claims 1-2% performance impact but offers no explanation.

Feb 14
NVIDIA halts RTX 50-series production temporarily

Six weeks into the GPU shortage, NVIDIA pauses new RTX 50-series production due to AI-driven DRAM demand.

Feb 12
Applied Materials fined $252M for illegal chip exports to China

Second-largest penalty in Bureau of Industry and Security history for exporting ion implantation equipment to China.

Feb 1
Tenstorrent announces TT-QuietBox 2 at $9,999

Liquid-cooled RISC-V workstation with four Blackhole ASICs runs 120B parameter models locally. Ships Q2 2026.

January 2026

Jan 24
RTX 5090 scalper prices hit $5,000 as shortage deepens

Four weeks after launch, RTX 5090 aftermarket prices reach $5,000. Retail shelves empty across Amazon, Best Buy, and Micro Center.

Jan 22
NVIDIA confirms GeForce RTX GPU shortage through fiscal 2027

Global DRAM memory crisis driven by AI datacenter demand creates consumer GPU shortages. RTX 5090 supply constrained at launch.

Jan 14
White House announces 25% tariff on AI-capable semiconductors

Tariffs imposed on chips meeting AI performance thresholds under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.

Jan 12
HBM memory shortage drives GPU server price increases

HBM3e production constraints push H100 and H200 server pricing upward as AI companies buy memory years in advance.

Jan 8
Intel launches Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 at CES 2026

First client processor on Intel 18A node. 14 SKUs with 50% performance uplift over Lunar Lake, shipping January 27.

Jan 7
AMD announces MI400 series and Helios rack-scale AI at CES 2026

MI400-series on TSMC 2nm with CDNA 5 architecture. Helios integrates 72 MI455X accelerators with 31TB HBM4 delivering 2.9 exaFLOPS.

Jan 6
NVIDIA launches Vera Rubin AI platform at CES — in full production

Next-gen Rubin platform combines Vera CPU + two Rubin GPUs. 5x inference performance, 10x lower cost per token vs Blackwell. Available H2 2026.

December 2025

Dec 29
NVIDIA takes $5B stake in Intel

NVIDIA purchases 214.7M Intel shares at $23.28/share after FTC approval. Companies to jointly develop datacenter and PC products using NVLink.

Dec 20
NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 72GB announced

Blackwell architecture comes to professional workstations with 72GB VRAM for AI development.

November 2025

Nov 23
Enterprise AI hardware demand outpaces supply

Datacenter GPU prices up 15-30% year-over-year heading into 2026 as enterprise AI deployments accelerate.

October 2025

Oct 15
NVIDIA DGX Spark begins shipping at $3,999

World's smallest AI supercomputer delivers petaflop performance with 128GB unified memory. Available from Acer, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, MSI.

January 2025

Jan 20
DeepSeek R1 released — surpasses ChatGPT on iOS App Store

Chinese AI lab releases open-weight reasoning model, driving demand for local inference hardware worldwide.