China Tech Giants Order $35B of Nvidia AI Chips
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent ordered 3M+ Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 GPUs worth $35B for AI inference, Reuters reports. Nvidia warns it cannot deliver in full.
China's biggest technology companies have placed one of the largest AI hardware orders on record. ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have together ordered more than 3 million of Nvidia's RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, worth more than $35 billion, according to a Reuters exclusive citing people familiar with the matter, first reported on October 21, 2026.
Why this order is a big deal
The numbers are huge. At roughly $11,400 per card, the three companies' combined order tops $35 billion. And the total orders from China are even larger: overall demand from Chinese buyers has reportedly passed 6 million cards. Chinese firms have already bought more than 1 million export-compliant Nvidia GPUs in 2026, as their own chip output still falls short of demand.
Why they want this chip
The RTX PRO 5500 is a workstation GPU, designed for high-performance professional computers rather than giant AI data centers. But it is among the most powerful Nvidia products that can still be sold to China under current US export rules. Nvidia's Blackwell-based B300 data-center chip is banned from sale in China, while the Hopper-based H200 needs case-by-case review and licensing. The companies reportedly plan to use the cards mainly for AI inference. Inference is the stage where a trained model is put into real services, such as generating chatbot answers. It needs far less computing power than training a model from scratch, so a less powerful but available chip can still do useful work.
The supply problem
There is one big catch: Nvidia has warned customers and partners that it cannot guarantee the full orders. One source said buyers may receive only 5% to 10% of the quantities they asked for. Another said Nvidia can produce no more than 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards worldwide in 2027, far below the 6 million-plus already ordered from China alone. Early samples are expected in December, with commercial deliveries starting in the first quarter of 2027. Nvidia is also expected to give priority to its next-generation Rubin platform, which could limit how many of these cards it builds.
What it means for the AI chip race
The order shows that US export controls are not stopping Chinese demand for Nvidia hardware. They are redirecting it toward compliant workarounds. It also shows that China's near-term AI buildout still depends on Nvidia chips, even as Chinese companies work with domestic suppliers like Huawei. One note of caution: the $35 billion figure is an order total, not secured revenue. With deliveries not starting until 2027 and supply far below demand, the headline number should not be read as an immediate sales win for Nvidia.
Sources
- NDTV Profit - https://www.ndtvprofit.com/technology/banned-from-top-ai-chips-china-just-dropped-35-billion-on-this-nvidia-gpu-12210396 - TweakTown - https://www.tweaktown.com/news/114183/bytedance-alibaba-and-tencent-order-nvidia-rtx-pro-5500-chips-worth-over-dollars35-billion/index.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=news-mf - DigitalToday - https://www.digitaltoday.co.kr/en/view/117613/chinas-big-three-tech-firms-order-more-than-3-million-nvidia-chips-supply-falls-short-of-demand