Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance have reportedly placed orders for around 3 million Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 workstation GPUs, worth about $35 billion. The cards are export-compliant versions, meaning they are designed to fit within US restrictions on selling advanced AI hardware to China.
According to the report, demand is far higher than Nvidia's planned production. The source suggests that only about 10% of the orders can actually be fulfilled, leaving the Chinese firms with far fewer GPUs than they hoped for.
The purchases underscore how Chinese tech companies continue to invest heavily in AI infrastructure despite export controls. The report indicates that export-compliant workstation GPUs are a key route for Chinese firms to obtain Nvidia AI hardware within the current rules.