Chinese Tech Firms Reportedly Order Millions of NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 Cards

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, with a combined list price above $35 billion, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The companies and NVIDIA have not confirmed the orders publicly.

The RTX PRO 5500 is a workstation card, rather than a processor designed for large data-center clusters. The sources told Reuters that Chinese buyers intend to use the cards mainly for AI inference, which runs trained models and generally requires less computing power than training them.

U.S. export controls bar sales of NVIDIA’s Blackwell-based B300 data-center chip to Chinese buyers. Exports of its Hopper-based H200 require case-by-case review and licensing conditions. The RTX PRO 5500 is among NVIDIA’s most powerful chips still available to Chinese buyers, Reuters reported.

NVIDIA has told customers and partners it cannot guarantee it will fill the orders, according to Reuters. One source said partners might receive only 5% to 10% of requested quantities. Another said NVIDIA indicated it could produce no more than 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards worldwide in 2027. Chinese customer orders for the card have exceeded 6 million, two sources said.

The orders point to continued demand for NVIDIA hardware in China despite U.S. restrictions, Reuters reported.