Nvidia RTX PRO 5500: China Giants Order 3mn, Reuters

Three of China’s biggest technology groups have ordered more than 3 million of Nvidia’s new RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, with a combined sticker price of over $35bn, Reuters reported on 20 October, citing two people familiar with the matter. ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent are rushing to buy a workstation chip that is less powerful than Nvidia’s data-centre processors but can still be sold in China under US export rules, according to the report.

The catch is supply. 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 two sources and a third person told Reuters. For Nvidia, investors and Chinese AI developers, the story is less about one chip than about how much US-compliant computing power China can still buy, and how little of it may actually arrive.

In brief

Reuters’ sources say ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent ordered more than 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards, worth over $35bn at sticker price.
Nvidia has reportedly told partners they might get only 5% to 10% of what they asked for, with commercial deliveries from the first quarter of 2027.
Nvidia has not confirmed the order figures, and the three buyers did not respond to Reuters.

Demand far beyond what Nvidia says it can build

The numbers in Reuters’ report point to a large gap. One source said Nvidia told partners “they 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”. Total orders from customers in China “have exceeded 6 million”, two of the sources said.

Price explains the headline figure. The three companies’ orders are for cards “priced at about $11,400 each”, two of the sources told Reuters, giving a potential combined value of more than $35bn. That is a sticker price for orders, not confirmed sales or revenue.

Nvidia’s manufacturing plans add to the squeeze. From 2027, Nvidia is expected to devote much of its capacity at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to Rubin, its next-generation data-centre platform, rather than products like the RTX PRO 5500, two of the sources said. TSMC declined to comment. Nvidia has told customers to expect early samples in December, with commercial deliveries beginning in the first quarter of 2027, according to the report.

Figure	What Reuters’ sources say
Orders from the three groups	More than 3 million cards
Price per card	About $11,400
Possible allocation	5% to 10% of requests (one source)
Nvidia’s 2027 global output	No more than 3 million (one source)
Total China orders	More than 6 million

Source: Reuters, 20 October 2026, via The Economic Times.

Why a workstation card has become a China AI chip

The RTX PRO 5500 is designed for powerful professional computers, not the huge data-centre clusters that run Nvidia’s top AI processors. But it is among the most powerful Nvidia chips still available to Chinese buyers, Reuters said. Nvidia’s Blackwell-based B300 is not allowed to be sold to Chinese buyers under US export controls, while exports of the Hopper-based H200 are reviewed case by case and subject to licensing conditions.

That shapes how the cards will be used. Chinese companies want them mainly for AI inference, running trained models to generate chatbot responses, the three sources said, which generally needs less computing power than training. The RTX PRO 5500 is similar in performance to the RTX 6000D, according to product specifications seen by Reuters.

The change in appetite is notable. Reuters reported last year that major Chinese tech firms initially showed little interest in the RTX 6000D, a reduced-capability chip built to meet US rules, viewing it as overpriced and hoping Washington would allow more powerful sales. Those hopes have faded as restrictions stayed in place and computing capacity remained scarce, two sources said. The RTX 6000D has since been discontinued and its market price in China has doubled, one source said.

Smaller buyers are in the queue too. In a 13 October filing, Shenzhen-listed Tansun Technology said it had agreed to buy 20,000 RTX PRO 5500 cards from an unidentified counterparty, and cautioned that shortages and overseas technology controls could delay deliveries or reduce volumes, Reuters reported. TSN has previously reported the FT’s finding that Chinese tech firms bought more than 1mn Nvidia gaming and workstation chips this year.

Nvidia points to export rules and China’s own limits

Nvidia did not confirm the orders. A spokesperson told Reuters that Chinese producers of workstation chips and cards have seen “unprecedented growth since 2022,” when the curbs were first imposed. “US firms continue to be restricted by a combination of outdated US export controls, which cover gaming products released nearly a half a decade ago, and China’s own limit on US imports,” the spokesperson said.

The other parties stayed silent. ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security nor China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, according to Reuters. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has said the restrictions cut Nvidia’s share of China’s AI data-centre chip market from a near monopoly to effectively nothing, Reuters noted, while Washington’s curbs have pushed Chinese firms towards domestic suppliers such as Huawei.

Our read

This is TSN’s analysis, not investment advice. If Reuters’ sources are right, Chinese demand for export-compliant Nvidia hardware is far larger than the supply Nvidia is prepared to set aside, and allocation, not orders, will decide who gets computing power in 2027. From a compliance angle, the story also shows how export rules move demand down the product range rather than removing it. The test comes with December’s samples and the first-quarter deliveries, and whether Nvidia or the buyers ever confirm the figures.