'AI's heart and brain': What is a GPU and why its prices are out of control
Produced by Abhinav Yadav
Produced by Abhinav Yadav
Purchasing a graphics card has become a nightmare in 2025. Even the largest tech businesses in the world are having trouble obtaining GPUs, prices have skyrocketed. Everyone is struggling, whether they want to make content, play games, or develop the next major artificial intelligence (AI).
GPUs are the secret engines behind artificial intelligence. Unlike normal computer chips (CPUs), GPUs can handle thousands of tasks at the same time. This makes them perfect for training AI models, which need to process mountains of data very quickly. “GPUs are the workhorses of modern artificial intelligence, enabling the training and deployment of complex AI models that power everything from image recognition to natural language processing.”
The world’s biggest tech giants, like OpenAI, Google, Grok, Meta, and more are buying up GPUs as fast as they can. They need them to train massive AI models. In early 2025, Nvidia sent nearly 60 per cent of its new chips to these companies.
Elon Musk has made the GPU shortage even worse. His companies, including Tesla and xAI, have built giant supercomputers using tens of thousands of Nvidia chips. Musk’s AI chatbot Grok 2 needed 20,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs just to train. For Grok 3, he says he’ll need 100,000 more.
AI models need to do millions of calculations at once. CPUs work like a one lane road-one car at a time. GPUs are like a ten lane motorway – hundreds of cars zooming by together. That’s why AI training on CPUs would take weeks or months, but with GPUs, it can be done in days or even hours. Simply put: No GPUs, no modern AI. That’s why the shortage is such a big deal for the future of technology.
GPU prices in April 2025 are extremely high. For example, the Nvidia RTX 5090 is supposed to cost $1,999, but it is selling for around $3,871. The Nvidia RTX 5080 should be $999, but the market price is around $1,533. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT has a retail price of $599, but people are paying close to $957 for it. Some graphics cards are now selling for more than double their official price.
Experts believe the GPU shortage may continue until late 2025. Recent earthquakes in Taiwan have slowed down chip production, while the demand for GPUs in artificial intelligence keeps going up. The AI boom has made GPUs more valuable than ever, and they are now the most sought-after technology in the market.