Chinese companies have ordered 6 million Nvidia chips – against a production cap of 3 million
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have, according to Reuters, ordered more than 3 million of Nvidia's export-compliant RTX PRO 5500 cards at a combined list price of over $35 billion – but Nvidia has, according to sources, signaled it may deliver only 5–10 percent of the requested volume. The story of the orders, which none of the companies has confirmed, reveals both what kind of computing power China's AI industry actually needs and how tight supply is about to become.
What has been ordered
According to Reuters' exclusive of October 20, 2026, which is based on two anonymous sources familiar with the matter, ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million units of Nvidia's new RTX PRO 5500 graphics card. The cards are priced at around $11,400 each, giving the orders a potential combined list price of over $35 billion (Miami Herald/Reuters).
Two caveats matter from the outset. First, the figures rest entirely on anonymous sources – none of the three companies responded to Reuters' inquiries, and neither Nvidia nor US or Chinese authorities have confirmed the order volumes. Second, "combined list price" is a theoretical figure: Nvidia has itself, according to the sources, said it cannot guarantee fulfilling the orders, so $35 billion far exceeds what is actually expected to translate into purchases and deliveries.
Why this particular card
The choice of the RTX PRO 5500 is not accidental. The card is a workstation GPU that is export-compliant to China under US restrictions, unlike Nvidia's most powerful data center chips: sales of the B300 to China are blocked, while exports of the H200 are assessed case by case.
The three sources say the Chinese companies will primarily use the cards for AI inference – that is, running already-trained models to generate answers in chatbots and similar services. Inference generally requires far less computing power than training models on enormous datasets. That makes a less powerful but obtainable card attractive: China's tech giants have not given up on American hardware, but they are shifting from the top of the training-class chips to what they can actually buy – aimed at inference, which the sources identify as the most important use case, serving models in production.
The aftershocks of this shift are already visible in the market. The RTX 6000D, an earlier export-compliant variant that initially met little Chinese interest, has been discontinued according to one of the sources – and its market price in China has doubled.
The supply squeeze
Demand far exceeds production, and Nvidia has, according to three sources, told customers and partners that it cannot guarantee fulfilling the orders. Specifically, the sources point in three directions:
- Delivery share. One source says partners may receive only 5 to 10 percent of what they have requested.
- Global production cap. Another source says Nvidia has indicated it can produce at most 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards globally in 2027 – against total Chinese orders of more than 6 million cards.
- TSMC prioritization. From 2027, Nvidia is expected to devote much of its production capacity at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to Rubin, the next-generation platform for large-scale data centers, rather than to products like the RTX PRO 5500. TSMC declined to comment.
The timeline makes the squeeze acute: Nvidia has, according to the sources, said that early sample units will arrive in December 2026 and that commercial deliveries begin in the first quarter of 2027. Although the first deliveries are thus only months away, the card will compete during the scale-up within Nvidia's own portfolio for the same TSMC capacity as the Rubin platform – and with a global production cap of 3 million cards against Chinese orders at twice that level, the large majority of demand is expected to go unfulfilled.
Corroborating evidence – and what it covers
The only verifiable data point about the demand on the public record is a stock exchange filing from October 13, in which Shenzhen-listed Tansun Technology, a fintech and AI computing services company, disclosed that it has agreed to purchase 20,000 RTX PRO 5500 cards from an unnamed counterparty. The filing simultaneously warned that shortages and export controls could delay the deliveries. Tansun is a far smaller player than the three giants, but its filing points in the same direction as the anonymous source accounts: demand is real, and supply certainty is uncertain enough that buyers themselves are warning shareholders about delays.
Beyond this, the picture of the companies' and governments' responses is marked by entrenched positions. An Nvidia spokesperson said Chinese manufacturers of workstation chips and cards have seen "unprecedented growth since 2022" – the year the restrictions were first introduced – and blamed outdated US restrictions and China's own import limits. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has previously said the restrictions reduced the company's share of China's AI data center chip market from near-monopoly to practically nothing.
What we don't know
Several substantial parts of this story rest on uncertain ground:
- The order figures are unconfirmed. The 3 million cards, the $35 billion, the $11,400 unit price, the 5–10 percent delivery share and the total Chinese orders of more than 6 million all come from anonymous sources. ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have not commented.
- The order values exceed real committed spending. Since Nvidia itself says, according to the sources, that only a fraction may be delivered, the $35 billion should be read as a theoretical ceiling, not a committed expense.
- Export status is unresolved over time. The sources describe the card as export-compliant today, but it is not settled whether it will remain so under further rule changes from the US or China's own import restrictions.
- All available texts trace back to one report. Retellings in other media repeat the same Reuters exclusive and do not constitute independent confirmations.
What is certain is this: China's largest tech companies are still trying to secure American hardware, but now for inference, through export-compliant products, in volumes that production cannot match. Whether the rest is filled by increased Nvidia deliveries, Chinese alternatives – which Nvidia's spokesperson suggests are growing quickly – or simply goes unfulfilled is the most open question in this story.