China weighs letting ByteDance and Alibaba buy new Nvidia chips
The Chinese government has signalled it may permit domestic technology giants to purchase a newly released Nvidia workstation chip, potentially easing a hardware bottleneck for local artificial intelligence development.
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology asked foreign companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba Group, to outline their desired order volumes and intended applications for Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5500 graphics card. According to a Sunday report by The Information, officials informed select firms that the government intends to approve these acquisitions.
The regulatory shift marks a change in strategy from Beijing, which has restricted its largest tech firms from buying certain advanced foreign semiconductors despite relaxed export rules from Washington earlier this year.
Bypassing data centre restrictions
Unveiled this month, the RTX Pro 5500 is a Blackwell-generation card designed for high-end professional computers rather than for large-scale data centres. While the component features slower memory and fewer high-speed connections than Nvidia’s premier accelerators, Chinese buyers reportedly plan to install the cards into servers in clusters of eight to power their language models and chatbots.
Faced with immense computing demands, ByteDance is currently considering a provisional order of approximately 1 million units. Nvidia aims to commence Chinese shipments in late December with a target of 500,000 units per quarter. Sales representatives have allegedly urged local customers to finalise their orders by the end of September to secure supply.
Earlier in 2026, the United States eased export restrictions on Nvidia’s H200 data centre chips for approved Chinese buyers. However, Beijing emerged as the primary barrier, blocking domestic companies from fulfilling their orders as part of a broader push for technological self-reliance.
The RTX Pro 5500 appears to offer a viable compromise for corporations straining to maintain their competitive edge in artificial intelligence. Crucial details regarding approval timelines, specific company allocations and final export permissions remain unresolved.
Nvidia, ByteDance, Alibaba and the Chinese ministry have not publicly commented on the prospective orders.
