ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent ordered 3M+ Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 GPUs worth $35B+ on 20 October amid US export curbs.

Two people familiar with the matter gave sources the figures. Each card carries a sticker price of about $11,400.

The bigger problem is supply. Nvidia has told customers it cannot promise to fill the orders, because Chinese demand far outstrips its production plans.

One source said partners might get only 5% to 10% of what they asked for.

Another said Nvidia has indicated it can make no more than 3 million of these cards worldwide in 2027.

Orders from Chinese customers have topped 6 million, two sources said.

The RTX PRO 5500 is built for professional workstations, not the giant data centres behind advanced AI.

US rules bar sales of Nvidia’s B300 to China, and H200 exports need case-by-case review.

That leaves this card among the most powerful Nvidia chips Chinese buyers can still get. Chinese firms mainly want it for inference, the three sources said.

That means running an already trained AI model so it can answer chatbot questions, which takes less computing power than training a new one.

Demand looked different last year. Major Chinese firms initially showed little interest in the RTX 6000D, a reduced-capability Nvidia chip.

Hopes that Washington would allow stronger chips have since faded, two sources said.

The RTX 6000D is now discontinued, and one source said its China price has doubled. Others are buying too.

Shenzhen-listed Tansun Technology said in an October 13 filing that it agreed to buy 20,000 cards from an unnamed counterparty, and it warned that shortages could delay deliveries.

From 2027, Nvidia is expected to shift much of its capacity at chipmaker TSMC to Rubin, its next data-centre platform, two sources said.

Nvidia has told customers to expect early samples in December and deliveries from the first quarter of 2027, the sources added.

CEO Jensen Huang has said US curbs cut Nvidia’s share of China’s AI data-centre chip market from near monopoly to almost nothing.

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