Where did all the graphics cards go? One bank may tell you.

Banks and graphics cards.

In the summer of 2017, analysts recorded a rapid rise in prices for graphics cards, especially in Russia. They even talked about their deficit, it was associated with the growth rate of bitcoin and the interest of Russians in the production of crypto-currency. The price of some positions in this segment has grown by 50-100%.

However, according to the Sberbank Senior Vice-President Alexander Vedyakhin, the reason for the shortage in the graphics card market was the largest bank in Russia - Sberbank, which actively bought up powerful graphics processors for its artificial intelligence lab.

November 11, 2017, at the international conference of Sberbank for Data Analysis, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence "Sberbank Data Science Day", Alexander Vedyakhin made the following statement: "We invest very much in technology. And incidentally, we should apologize for that some shortage in the market of graphics cards, which occurred recently, because that we bought them for the laboratory of artificial intelligence. But soon everything will appear because we have satisfied our need".

What graphics cards were purchased and in what amount were not reported. However, NVIDIA Corporation is among the official partners of Sberbank in the field of Data Science. AMD, in its turn, is not among the partners.

Why did Sberbank require graphics cards?

Sberbank plans by the end of 2018 to implement 159 projects using artificial intelligence technology. Sberbank CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank Herman Gref made the following statement in September 2017 on the set of the "Digital Economy: Generation Z" quiz: "Today we do not have a single field of activity within the company in which we would not try to use artificial intelligence. If to speak in numerical terms - by the end of next year we plan to implement 159 projects in various areas of our activity. "

Let's take a look at price trends.

Thick black lines represent the average price for parts in the given category. Gray banding represents the minimum / maximum price range. Individual part prices are displayed as light blue points within the gray banding, creating an intensity graph of the price distribution. Dips in the lower price bound typically correspond to sales, or in extreme cases merchant pricing mistakes. Price data includes promos, coupons, rebates, and shipping costs (when available).

GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (Average price in USD over last 18 months)