TLDR
- ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have reportedly asked for more than 3 million Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 cards.
- At about $11,400 each, the orders are worth over $35 billion.
- Nvidia says it cannot guarantee delivery, and some buyers may get 5% to 10% of their request.
- The workstation card is less powerful than Nvidia’s top chips but meets US export rules.
- Early samples are due in December, with deliveries starting in the first quarter of 2027.
Three of China’s biggest tech companies have placed huge orders for a new Nvidia graphics card, Reuters reported on October 20. ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have asked for more than 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards.
At a price of about $11,400 per card, the orders add up to more than $35 billion. Two people familiar with the matter gave Reuters the figures.
Nvidia has told customers and partners it may not be able to deliver everything. Demand from Chinese firms is far higher than the company planned to produce.
Why Chinese Buyers Want the RTX PRO 5500
The RTX PRO 5500 is a workstation chip, not a data center processor. It is less powerful than Nvidia’s H200 and B300 chips.
Still, it is among the strongest Nvidia chips Chinese buyers can legally get. US rules ban sales of the B300 to China, and H200 exports are reviewed case by case.
Chinese companies plan to use the cards mostly for AI inference. That means running trained models to answer chatbot questions, which needs less computing power than training.
The card performs about the same as the RTX 6000D, according to product specifications Reuters saw. Nvidia launched that chip in the middle of last year, and large Chinese firms showed little interest at first.
Buyers had hoped Washington would approve more powerful chips. Those hopes faded as the limits stayed in place and computing capacity stayed scarce.
Nvidia has since discontinued the RTX 6000D, and its price in China has doubled, one source said.
Limited Supply and Delivery Timeline
One source said partners might receive only 5% to 10% of what they asked for. Total orders from China have topped 6 million cards.
Another source said Nvidia could build no more than 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards worldwide in 2027.
Nvidia is expected to give much of its Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing capacity to its Rubin platform starting in 2027. Rubin is designed for large data centers.
Chief Executive Jensen Huang has said US limits cut Nvidia’s share of China’s AI data center chip market from near monopoly to almost nothing. An Nvidia spokesperson blamed outdated US export controls and China’s own limits on US imports.
On October 13, Shenzhen-listed Tansun Technology said it agreed to buy 20,000 RTX PRO 5500 cards. The company warned that shortages and overseas technology controls could delay deliveries.
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent did not respond to requests for comment.
Nvidia has told customers to expect early samples in December. Commercial deliveries are expected to begin in the first quarter of 2027.
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