ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent place over $35bn of Nvidia chip orders

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, in a rush for a less powerful but export-compliant chip amid US restrictions on trade with China, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The orders, worth about $11,400 per card, are mainly intended for AI inference — running trained models to generate chatbot responses — according to two people familiar with the matter, cited by Reuters. The sources requested anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media.

Nvidia has told customers and partners it cannot guarantee it can fill the orders, because demand from Chinese technology companies far exceeds planned production. One source said partners might receive only 5% to 10% of the quantities requested; another said Nvidia 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 RTX PRO 5500 is a workstation chip, less powerful than Nvidia’s Blackwell-based B300 — which is barred from China under US export controls — and its Hopper-based H200, whose exports are reviewed on a case-by-case basis and subject to licensing conditions.

The chip’s predecessor, the RTX 6000D, has been discontinued and its market price in China has doubled, one source said. In an October 13 filing, Shenzhen-listed Tansun Technology said it had agreed to buy 20,000 RTX PRO 5500 cards from an unidentified counterparty.

Sources: SRN News (Reuters), The Hindu BusinessLine (Reuters)