Citrini's Perspective: NVIDIA's Competitive Moat Remains Strong, HBM4 Cost Doubling Drives Rubin Price Increase, High Margins and Strong Pricing Power Unshaken

BlockBeats News, July 28, Citrini analyst Jukan cited Fubon Securities' "2027 Semiconductor Outlook" report, stating that although HBM4 costs will significantly jump from HBM3e's $17-18/GB to $31-32/GB in 2026, pushing NVIDIA Rubin GPU prices to approximately $78,000 to $80,000, NVIDIA can still maintain a high gross margin level of 75% to 80%. Its pricing power and cost transmission capabilities remain unshaken. The report also pointed out that custom ASIC HBM costs could be even higher, reaching $35-36/GB, indicating that HBM costs will double by 2027. Fubon Securities remains optimistic about AI market demand, suggesting that despite recent concerns about AI inflation, Token costs are still a more critical factor driving cloud service providers' capital expenditures. At the architectural level, NVIDIA's new racks still plan to use the same number of compute chips, with cables used for scale-up within racks and NPO/CPO used for scale-out between racks. Additionally, Google plans to deploy 12 million to 15 million TPUs by 2028, more than doubling its capacity consumption compared to 2027. Intel's EMIB capacity is expected to increase to 24,000 to 25,000 wafers per month by the end of 2027, while TSMC is slowing SoIC expansion to prioritize CoWoS capacity growth. The core conclusion is that even with changes in cost structure, NVIDIA's pricing power, gross margins, and demand support within the AI computing ecosystem continue to build an unshakable competitive barrier. [Original Link]