Nvidia Chip Prices to Rise 17%, Starcloud CEO on Orbital Data Centers, Amazon’s Growing Importance

Nvidia is raising prices on flagship chips by approximately 17% for upcoming server rack shipments, driven primarily by persistent memory shortages and supply chain constraints. Concurrently, the company is negotiating a potential multi-billion dollar investment in AI search firm Perplexity at a $30 billion valuation, signaling a strategic shift toward equity-based partnerships to bolster its AI model ecosystem. In the space sector, Starcloud has secured $250 million in funding to advance its orbital data center technology, aiming to deploy more capable satellites with active liquid cooling systems to support high-performance computing in orbit. Meanwhile, independent merchants are increasingly pivoting back to Amazon as a primary retail channel, as rising ad costs on platforms like Meta and Google, combined with shifting search engine interfaces, make direct-to-consumer strategies less economically viable and harder for organic traffic discovery.