ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent place $35B+ in orders for Nvidia's export-compliant RTX PRO 5500 chips, Reuters reports

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ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million of Nvidia's new RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards with a collective sticker price of over $35 billion, Reuters exclusively reported on Oct 20, citing two people familiar with the matter. The cards are priced at about $11,400 each.

The RTX PRO 5500 is a workstation chip, designed for powerful professional computers rather than the large data-centre clusters that use Nvidia's most advanced AI processors. Even so, it ranks among the strongest Nvidia products Chinese customers can still buy. US export controls bar sales of Nvidia's Blackwell-based B300 data-centre chip to Chinese buyers, while exports of its Hopper-based H200 are reviewed case by case under licensing conditions.

Nvidia has told customers and partners it cannot guarantee it can fill the orders because demand from Chinese technology companies far exceeds planned production, the sources said. One source said partners might receive only 5% to 10% of the quantities requested; another said the company had indicated it could produce no more than 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards globally in 2027, while total orders from customers in China have exceeded 6 million.

The companies want the cards mainly for AI inference — running models that have already been trained. Demand has grown as restrictions dragged on: its predecessor, the RTX 6000D, has been discontinued, and one source said its market price in China has doubled. Shenzhen-listed Tansun Technology disclosed in an Oct. 13 filing that it had agreed to buy 20,000 RTX PRO 5500 cards from an unnamed seller.