ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent Reportedly Order Over $35 Billion of Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 Cards
According to a Reuters exclusive, Nvidia has warned it may fill only 5% to 10% of requested volumes.
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have reportedly placed orders for more than 3 million Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 workstation cards worth over $35 billion at list price, according to a Reuters exclusive published October 20. Nvidia has not publicly confirmed the figures.
What Reuters reported
- Scale: Orders from the three companies exceed 3 million cards, at roughly $11,400 each. Two sources said total orders from Chinese customers top 6 million.
- Supply: Nvidia has told customers it cannot guarantee fulfillment because Chinese demand far exceeds planned production. One source said partners could receive only 5% to 10% of what they requested; another said Nvidia indicated it could build no more than 3 million of the cards worldwide in 2027.
- Timing: Nvidia has reportedly told customers to expect early samples in December and commercial deliveries from the first quarter of 2027.
- Capacity: From 2027, Nvidia is expected to shift much of its TSMC capacity toward its Rubin data-center platform.
Why this chip
The RTX PRO 5500 is a workstation product, less powerful than the H200 and B300 data-center chips. U.S. rules bar sales of the Blackwell-based B300 to Chinese buyers, and H200 exports are reviewed case by case under licenses. Reuters said Nvidia describes the RTX PRO 5500 as among the most powerful of its chips still available to Chinese customers, and that Chinese firms mainly want it for AI inference, running trained models rather than training them.
A Shenzhen-listed company, Tansun Technology, said in an October 13 filing that it agreed to buy 20,000 of the cards.
Context
Nvidia's CEO has said export restrictions cut its share of China's AI data-center market from near-monopoly to effectively nothing, and the company blames outdated U.S. export controls, along with China's own limits on U.S. imports. Beijing also encourages domestic chips, and Huawei has gained market share. The three Chinese companies, the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security and China's industry ministry did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
