ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million of Nvidia’s RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards. Their combined sticker price is over $35bn. Reuters reported the orders on Tuesday, citing two people familiar with the matter. TNW has not independently verified the report.
Nvidia has told customers and partners it cannot guarantee it will fill the orders. That is according to the two sources and a third person who spoke to Reuters. Demand from Chinese tech companies far exceeds the production Nvidia has planned, they said.
Up to 10% of what was ordered
One source said Nvidia told partners they might receive only 5% to 10% of the quantities they asked for. Another said Nvidia could make no more than 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards worldwide in 2027. Total orders from customers in China have passed 6 million, two of the sources said.
The three companies are paying about $11,400 per card, according to two of the sources. Nvidia has told customers to expect early samples in December, with commercial deliveries from the first quarter of 2027.
Two of the sources expect Nvidia to give much of its TSMC capacity to Rubin from 2027. Rubin is its next platform for large data centres. TSMC declined to comment to Reuters.
Why a workstation card
The RTX PRO 5500 is built for powerful professional computers. It is not meant for the large data-centre clusters that run Nvidia’s top AI chips. It is still among the most powerful Nvidia chips Chinese buyers can get. US export controls bar sales of the Blackwell-based B300 to China. Washington reviews exports of the older H200 case by case.
The companies plan to use the cards mainly for inference, the three sources said. That is the work of running trained models to answer chatbot requests. Inference generally needs less computing power than training.
Last year, Chinese firms showed little interest in the RTX 6000D. Nvidia cut that similar card down to meet US rules. The firms hoped Washington would allow sales of more powerful chips. That hope has faded as the restrictions stayed and computing capacity stayed scarce, two of the sources said. Nvidia has since stopped making the RTX 6000D, and its price in China has doubled, one source said.
The orders follow a report by The Information last month that Beijing may let Alibaba and ByteDance buy the new card. Shenzhen-listed Tansun Technology said in a 13 October filing that it would buy 20,000 RTX PRO 5500 cards. It did not name the seller. It warned that shortages and overseas technology controls could delay deliveries or cut volumes.
What Nvidia says
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has said the US restrictions cut its share of China’s AI data-centre chip market. It went from a near monopoly to effectively nothing, he said. In August, the company said it expected no data-centre revenue from its first H200 shipments to China.
An Nvidia spokesperson told Reuters that Chinese makers of workstation chips and cards have seen “unprecedented growth since 2022”. That was the year the curbs began.
“US firms continue to be restricted by a combination of outdated US export controls, which cover gaming products released nearly a half a decade ago, and China’s own limit on US imports,” the spokesperson said.
The curbs have pushed Chinese companies towards domestic suppliers, with Huawei gaining market share. Alibaba unveiled its Zhenwu V900 chip in September. Washington is also looking at how Chinese firms rent Nvidia chips they cannot buy.
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. Neither did the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security nor China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.