Jensen’s margins are your misery
Nvidia is no longer a hardware company. It is a sovereign tax collector. As of December 02, 2025, the fiscal Q3 2026 earnings report confirms a staggering $35.1 billion in revenue, but the catch lies in the gross margins. While Nvidia (NVDA) maintains a 75 percent margin on its Blackwell architecture, the consumer is being left with the bill. This isn’t just about enterprise servers or data centers. The massive pivot toward high-margin AI silicon has effectively orphaned the gaming and consumer electronics sectors, creating a supply vacuum that is driving prices to record highs.
The 2nm Wafer War
TSMC has the world in a chokehold. Recent reports from late November 2025 indicate that wafer prices for the N3P and upcoming N2 nodes have surged to over $25,000 per unit. Analysts like Vivek Arya at Bank of America have noted that Nvidia is prioritizing H200 and Blackwell B200 production over consumer GeForce RTX 50-series chips. This choice forces manufacturers like Asus and MSI to bid higher for a dwindling supply of mid-tier silicon. The result is a pricing floor that is 15 percent higher than the same period last year.
Apple is not immune to this pressure. Supply chain leaks regarding the iPhone 17 Pro, expected in late 2026, suggest that the cost of the A19 Pro chip has increased by 12 percent due to these wafer hikes. Per Reuters reporting on semiconductor logistics, the logistical bottleneck at the Port of Kaohsiung in late 2025 has added a 3 percent premium on all outbound air-freighted components, a cost that will be passed directly to the retail sticker price.
The Hidden Cost of HBM3e Memory
AI needs speed. High Bandwidth Memory (HBM3e) is the oxygen for Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, and companies like SK Hynix and Micron are redirecting every available production line to meet this demand. This shift has decimated the supply of standard GDDR7 memory used in consumer laptops and gaming consoles. When memory supply drops, your laptop’s price goes up. Sony’s recent pricing strategy for the PS5 Pro, which retails at $699 as of today, is a direct reflection of this component scarcity.
Market Cannibalization by Design
The industry is cannibalizing itself. According to Yahoo Finance data from the previous trading week, Nvidia’s data center revenue now dwarfs its gaming segment by a factor of five to one. This isn’t a transition; it is an abandonment. For the average consumer, this means the mid-range market (the $300 to $500 bracket) is effectively dead. To get the performance required for modern software, you are now forced into the premium tier where margins are safest for the manufacturers.
- Nvidia Blackwell B200 units are currently fetching $35,000 on the secondary market.
- TSMC 2nm pilot yields are reportedly stuck at 45 percent, limiting 2026 supply forecasts.
- Consumer electronics inflation is outpacing the general CPI by nearly double as of the October 2025 report.
The tech giants are betting that you will pay the premium. They are betting that AI features, many of which remain unproven in daily utility, will justify a 20 percent hike in the cost of a standard workstation. Goldman Sachs analyst Toshiya Hari warned in a late November note that the sustainability of these price points depends entirely on the ROI of AI software, which has yet to manifest for the average household. If the software bubble pops, we are left with overpriced hardware that nobody can afford.
Watch the January Fed Meeting
The next major milestone is the Federal Reserve’s rate decision on January 21. While the market anticipates a hold, any shift in the cost of capital will hit the heavily leveraged semiconductor supply chain immediately. If borrowing costs remain high, expect Nvidia to squeeze its board partners even harder, pushing the rumored RTX 5090 launch price well past the $2,000 mark.
