ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have placed orders worth over $35 billion for Nvidia's RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, according to Reuters, as Chinese technology companies chase one of the most capable chips still permitted for export to China.
The RTX PRO 5500 is a workstation chip built for professional computers rather than the large data-centre clusters that run Nvidia's top-tier artificial intelligence (AI) processors, but it ranks among the most powerful products Chinese buyers can still access under US export restrictions.
Nvidia's Blackwell-based B300 chip is barred from sale to China, while its Hopper-based H200 faces case-by-case licensing review.
It has has told customers it cannot guarantee fulfilling the orders because demand far exceeds planned production, with one source saying partners might receive only 5% to 10% of requested volumes.
Another source said Nvidia expects to produce no more than 3 million cards globally in 2027, even as total Chinese orders have topped 6 million units.
The three companies' orders are priced at about $11,400 per card.
Chinese firms are seeking the chips mainly for AI inference rather than training, which demands less computing power.
Interest has grown since Nvidia's earlier reduced-capability RTX 6000D, launched in the middle of last year, drew little initial demand; that chip has since been discontinued, and its market price in China has doubled, according to one source.
Starting in 2027, Nvidia is expected to shift much of its Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co capacity toward its next-generation Rubin platform, with early RTX PRO 5500 samples due in December and commercial deliveries beginning in the first quarter of 2027.
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