ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent Reportedly Order Over 3 Million Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 GPUs

Order book swells far beyond supply

Chinese technology giants ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have reportedly spent more than $35 billion on orders for over 3 million Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 workstation GPUs, according to sources who spoke to Reuters. Two of the sources said the cards are priced at around $11,400 each, bringing the total order value to roughly $35 billion.

The order is far larger than Nvidia's planned production for the card. Nvidia has told its customers that it is not in a position to fill the orders, and another source said the company informed partners it may only be able to deliver enough cards to meet 5% to 10% of demand. Nvidia is reportedly in a position to produce only 3 million RTX Pro 5500 cards globally in 2027.

A compliant card in high demand

The RTX Pro 5500 is a workstation GPU with the same number of CUDA cores as Nvidia's flagship RTX 5090, but with 84GB of GDDR7 memory attached, making it a good option for AI applications. Exporting the card is not currently restricted by the U.S. government, which has made it a popular choice for Chinese buyers at the moment.

The GPU is less powerful than the H200 and B300, Nvidia's AI focused GPUs for the enterprise market, but those models remain either banned or heavily restricted. As China competes with the U.S. in the race to produce newer and better AI models, GPUs such as the RTX Pro 5500 continue to be indispensable.

Companies decline to comment

Neither Nvidia nor the three Chinese companies have confirmed any of the details on the record. An Nvidia spokesman told Reuters that demand from the Chinese market for these chips has faced "unprecedented growth since 2022", when export restrictions were introduced.

The spokesman added that U.S. firms continue to be restricted by a combination of outdated U.S. export controls, which cover gaming products released nearly half a decade ago, and China's own limits on U.S. imports. The report also notes that export restricted Nvidia AI chips continue to reach China despite the rules, bypassing U.S. efforts in the process.

Sources: Tom's Hardware