Nvidia price hike will raise IT costs for all, analysts say
An upcoming Nvidia price hike will raise costs for enterprise IT buyers, regardless of whether they're investing in AI infrastructure, analysts said this week.
By
Beth Pariseau, senior news writer
Published: 26 Aug 2026
Nvidia price hikes are coming, company executives confirmed on an earnings call late Wednesday, and experts predict the entire tech industry -- enterprises included -- will feel the pinch.
The quarter continued heady financial growth for Nvidia -- it reported revenue of $96.2 billion for the quarter, up 106% from a year ago, with a 75% gross margin. Still, the company behind the mammoth Vera Rubin rack-scale AI infrastructure platform lowered its gross profit margin outlook for the remainder of its fiscal year and beyond due to "extreme pricing conditions" in the memory market, according to executive vice president and CFO Colette Kress.
"The magnitude of the price increase has exceeded our prior expectations and [is] headed even higher into next year. As a result, we are resetting expectations today," Kress said during the company's quarterly earnings call. Nvidia's future commitments to suppliers over the next three years more than doubled from the previous quarter to $279 billion, according to the company's earnings report.
The company's gross margins will decline to an estimated 74% in the fiscal third quarter, then "[hit] bottom" in the 71-72% range in the fourth quarter, Kress said. In fiscal 2028, those margins will increase again to between 72 and 73%, Kress said, "as executed price increases take effect in [fiscal] Q1" of 2028. Nvidia's fiscal 2028 will kick off at the end of January 2027.
"We want to be direct about this rather than let it linger as an open question," Kress said.
These comments partially confirmed a Bloomberg report on Aug. 22 that the company's largest customers have been notified of an upcoming Nvidia price hike, but did not confirm the report's estimate that prices will rise by more than 15%.
Enterprises will feel Nvidia price hike pain
Although large hyperscalers and frontier AI companies still account for most of Nvidia's direct chip customer base, enterprise IT buyers will feel the effects of the price hike -- whether or not they purchase AI infrastructure, according to industry analysts.
Memory goes into just about everything, so enterprises pay twice.
Mike LeoneAnalyst, Moor Insights & Strategy
"The thing driving the increase is more the memory than the GPUs, and memory goes into just about everything, so enterprises pay twice," said Mike Leone, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "One, AI capacity costs more, and they'll feel that in cloud pricing. And two, a normal 2027 hardware refresh gets more expensive as well, on servers, storage and laptops."
The biggest risk to enterprises in the hype around AI infrastructure is largely being overlooked, Leone said.
"Hardly anyone is budgeting for the second one, because they're reading the story as an AI problem," he said.
That said, concerns about AI token costs and security are also prompting many enterprises to evaluate running their own AI infrastructure; Dell reported 5,000 customers in May for its on-premises AI Factory. This latest price increase from Nvidia will also up the ante in that area for enterprise organizations, said Jim Frey, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget.
"This could affect any organization buying and deploying Nvidia GPUs, either directly from Nvidia or indirectly via integrated [stacks] built around Nvidia GPUs," Frey said. "For those building AI infrastructure, this will be yet another factor to consider."
Nvidia joins other IT infrastructure suppliers in warning of price hikes due to a global shortage of computer memory. Dell, for example, acknowledged in a November 2025 earnings call that price hikes will also be coming for customers over the next year due to memory supply constraints. Apple raised prices on consumer products due to the memory shortage in June 2026; Qualcomm notified customers of chip price hikes in July, effective Sept 1.
Nvidia leaders pledged during the earnings call to work with suppliers to increase available memory capacity going forward.
"We have long-standing, deep relationships with all three major memory suppliers, and we're working closely with them to further increase the capacity our roadmap requires," Kress said.
Beth Pariseau, senior news writer for Informa TechTarget, is an award-winning veteran of IT journalism. Have a tip? Email her or connect on LinkedIn.
