According to Reuters on Tuesday (October 20), citing two people familiar with the matter, Chinese technology giants ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million new RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards from the US chip manufacturer Nvidia, with a total price of more than 35 billion U.S. dollars (approximately more than 31 billion euros). The chip's performance is not as good as Nvidia's most advanced products, but it complies with U.S. export controls to China.
According to reports, Nvidia has informed customers and partners that because demand from Chinese technology companies far exceeds planned production, the company cannot guarantee that it will be able to meet these orders. The sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
According to Reuters, a source revealed that Nvidia told partners that they may end up receiving only 5% to 10% of the ordered quantity. Another source said that Nvidia has stated that global RTX PRO 5500 production in 2027 will only be 3 million units at most. Two sources said total orders from Chinese customers have exceeded 6 million pieces.
The unit price of graphics cards ordered by ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent is approximately US$11,400 (approximately 10,000 euros). The previously unreported orders show that demand for Nvidia hardware from Chinese companies remains strong despite U.S. export restrictions.
NVIDIA has informed customers that samples are expected to be available in December this year, and commercial deliveries will begin in the first quarter of 2027. Sources also said that starting in 2027, Nvidia is expected to use most of its production capacity at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC) for the next-generation large data center platform Rubin, rather than products such as the RTX PRO 5500. TSMC declined to comment.
RTX PRO 5500 is a workstation chip, mainly aimed at high-performance professional computers, rather than large data center clusters composed of Nvidia's most advanced AI processors. Still, it's one of the most powerful Nvidia chips currently available to Chinese buyers.
According to U.S. export control regulations, NVIDIA's B300 data center chips based on the Blackwell architecture cannot be sold to Chinese buyers, while the H200 based on the Hopper architecture needs to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and must meet licensing conditions.
According to three sources, Chinese companies purchased this graphics card mainly for AI inference, that is, running a trained model, such as generating answers to a chatbot. Inference typically requires less computing power than training a model using massive amounts of data.
Product specifications seen by Reuters show that the RTX PRO 5500 has similar performance to the RTX 6000D. Nvidia launched the RTX 6000D in the middle of last year, which was "downgraded" to comply with U.S. export restrictions. However, large Chinese technology companies showed little interest at first, and some companies refused to place orders. At the time, buyers thought the chip was low-cost and expected Washington to eventually release Nvidia processors with stronger performance. Now, as restrictions continue and AI computing power remains in short supply, these expectations have gradually come to nothing, making the RTX PRO 5500 a more attractive alternative. According to a source, the RTX 6000D has been discontinued and its market price in China has doubled.
Tansun Technology, a Shenzhen-listed financial technology and AI computing power services company, stated in an announcement on October 13 that it had agreed to purchase 20,000 RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards from an unnamed party. However, it also reminded that factors such as supply shortages, industry demand, and overseas technology controls may lead to delivery delays or quantity reductions.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said that U.S. export restrictions have reduced Nvidia's share of China's AI data center chip market from a near-monopoly to almost zero. However, the hot demand for RTX PRO 5500 shows that Nvidia can still maintain a considerable potential market in China with lower-performance products.
A spokesman for Nvidia said that China's domestic workstation chip and graphics card manufacturers have experienced "unprecedented growth" since the United States first implemented controls in 2022. "U.S. companies continue to be subject to dual restrictions, on the one hand, outdated U.S. export controls that even cover gaming products released nearly five years ago, and on the other hand, China's own restrictions on U.S. imports," he said.
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), which is responsible for export controls, and China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also did not respond.
The rush to buy also highlights that U.S. restrictions have tightened the supply of computing power in China, the world's second-largest economy. Chinese companies are currently racing to develop cutting-edge AI models, and Beijing is also promoting the application of artificial intelligence in various industries.
U.S. control measures have prompted Chinese companies to turn to local suppliers, and Beijing has also encouraged the use of domestic chips, with Huawei's market share rising significantly. Still, Chinese chipmakers have generally struggled to catch up with leading U.S. products, in part because of another set of restrictions that make it difficult for them to obtain the foreign equipment they need to make the most advanced semiconductors.
