Chinese firms expect only about 1% of their 6 million Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 chips in four months, Bloomberg reports

Chinese AI and cloud companies expect to receive only about 1% of the Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 chips they have ordered over the next four months, Bloomberg reported on November 4, citing people familiar with the matter. Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and other Chinese firms have ordered about 6 million of the cards, worth roughly $70 billion at more than $11,000 apiece, but buyers expect only tens of thousands of units — about 1% of the order — in the four-month window. The report has been picked up by several financial outlets; its sources are anonymous, and neither Nvidia nor the buyers have commented in the coverage, so the figures remain unconfirmed. (Cover photo is a file photo of a graphics card.)

Earlier guidance already pointed to 5–10%; global output cap is the bottleneck

The 1% figure covers only the next four months, not the final fill rate for the whole order. Reuters reported on October 20 that ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent alone had ordered more than 3 million cards worth over $35 billion, and that Nvidia had told partners global production of the card would be capped at 3 million units in 2027 — meaning Chinese orders alone are twice the planned global supply — with partners likely to receive only 5% to 10% of what they requested and no guarantee of full delivery. Industry estimates cited in the coverage suggest Chinese buyers could cumulatively receive about 700,000 cards by the end of 2027 as capacity ramps up, still far short of the 6 million ordered.

Capacity shifts to Rubin; samples due in December

The squeeze is driven by allocation. Nvidia has told customers its production schedule faces conflicts and that it is shifting more TSMC capacity to Rubin, its next-generation data-centre platform, leaving RTX Pro 5500 supply constrained. Under the previously disclosed timetable, samples of the card are expected in December 2026, with commercial shipments starting in the first quarter of 2027. The RTX Pro 5500 is a workstation graphics card rather than a data-centre accelerator, but because it falls outside US restrictions on the most advanced chips sold to China, it has become one of the most powerful Nvidia chips Chinese buyers can still obtain — which is why the delivery outlook is being watched closely.