In a rush for a less potent but export-compliant chip amid US trade restrictions with China, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million of Nvidia’s new RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, with a total sticker price of over $35 billion.
US-based chipmaker Nvidia has informed partners and clients that it cannot guarantee that it can fill the orders since demand from Chinese technology businesses substantially exceeds anticipated supply.
Nvidia’s most sophisticated AI processors are used in big data center clusters, but the RTX PRO 5500 is a workstation chip intended for powerful professional computers. However, it is one of the most potent Nvidia chips that Chinese consumers may still purchase.
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Under US export regulations, Nvidia’s Blackwell-based B300 data center processor cannot be marketed to Chinese consumers; however, shipments of its Hopper-based H200 are subject to license requirements and are evaluated on an individual basis.
Partners may only receive 5% to 10% of the necessary quantity, Nvidia warned. The business has stated that it could only manufacture 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards worldwide in 2027. Over 6 million orders have been placed by Chinese clients.
The three Chinese tech giants have placed orders for cards that cost over $11,400 apiece, potentially totaling more than $35 billion. The size of the orders, which have never been documented before, highlights Chinese businesses’ continued desire for Nvidia gear in spite of US restrictions.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the limitations caused Nvidia’s market share of AI data center chips in China to drop from a near monopoly to almost nothing.
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However, demand for the RTX PRO 5500 suggests Nvidia may still have a sizable potential market in China with less powerful products.
As Chinese businesses compete to build cutting-edge AI models and advance Beijing’s efforts to implement the technology across its industries, the demand spike also shows how U.S. restrictions have constrained computing-power supply in the world’s second-largest economy.
U.S. export controls have driven Chinese tech firms toward domestic chips, allowing homegrown suppliers like Huawei to expand their market share.
However, separate foreign equipment restrictions leave local chipmakers struggling to match advanced American hardware.
Meanwhile, an Nvidia spokesperson noted that Chinese workstation chip rivals have seen unprecedented growth since 2022 due to these curbs, warning that outdated U.S. restrictions on older gaming products and Beijing’s import limits continue to hold back American firms.
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Chinese firms are buying the RTX PRO 5500 as an export-compliant alternative for AI inference, which requires less computing power than the heavy model training handled by Nvidia’s restricted H200 and B300 chips.
While tech giants initially rejected similar downgraded chips last year due to high costs and hopes that U.S. curbs would ease, fading expectations and severe computing shortages have made this substitute attractive.
Nvidia’s constrained supply is driven by surging demand and a strategic reallocation of manufacturing capacity at TSMC toward its upcoming Rubin platform starting in 2027.
Consequently, commercial deliveries for affected products are slated for the first quarter of 2027, compounding market scarcity that has already doubled prices for the discontinued RTX 6000D in China.
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