Chinese AI giant rushes to grab Huida RTX Pro 5500, only 1% of the 2.3 trillion yuan order can be delivered

Huida RTX Pro 5500 graphics card. (Reuters)

[Compiled by Wei Guojin/Taipei Report] Bloomberg reported on the 4th that informed sources revealed that Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and other Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud companies have placed orders with Huida to purchase about 6 million RTX Pro 5500 graphics cards. However, because Huida’s production capacity cannot meet the surge in demand, the delivery volume in the next four months will only be tens of thousands, or about 1% of the purchase volume.

They said that each RTX Pro 5500 costs more than US$11,000 (NT$362,000), and the total orders placed so far are about US$70 billion (NT$2.3 trillion).

The report pointed out that the strong demand for Huida chips from China's ultra-large-scale cloud service companies highlights the huge gap in China's AI computing power. It also reflects that despite China's technological progress, local hardware manufacturers still have their own limitations in their technology. A shortage of chip supplies will make it more difficult for Chinese AI developers to catch up with U.S. market giants.

Although the United States bans Huida from selling its most advanced chips to China, the performance of the RTX Pro 5500 is not powerful enough to face relevant controls. In China, however, it is one of the best AI chips available, as Chinese manufacturers Huawei and Alibaba's Pingtou Ge lag behind their U.S. rivals in production capacity and technology.

According to people familiar with the matter, major Chinese AI developers are scheduled to receive the first batch of thousands of RTX Pro 5500 chips before the end of this year, followed by another batch of tens of thousands of graphics cards in February next year. A person familiar with the matter said that this is the shipment volume currently determined.

Citing an internal document from a key buyer, sources said that Huida is expected to obtain approximately 700,000 RTX Pro 5500 graphics cards by the end of 2027 as it anticipates increasing production. However, the final shipment scale may change based on Huida’s production capacity adjustments.