Chinese Tech Giants Order Over 6 Million Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 GPUs Amid Supply Shortage
Per Reuters, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent have ordered over 6 million RTX PRO 5500 GPUs for AI inference. However, Nvidia's projected 2027 global capacity is only 3 million units, leading to severe supply constraints and low fulfillment rates for these massive orders.
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According to a report by German tech outlet heise online citing Reuters, major Chinese technology companies including Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent have placed orders for more than 6 million Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 graphics processing units. These chips are intended for artificial intelligence inference tasks, with a total list price value of approximately $35 billion.
However, these massive orders face a significant production bottleneck. A Reuters source indicated that Nvidia's maximum global production capacity for the RTX PRO 5500 in 2027 is only about 3 million units, which must serve all customers worldwide. This implies that Chinese firms may receive only 5% to 10% of their requested volume. Analysts note that buyers likely inflated their order quantities in anticipation of under-delivery, meaning actual shipments will be far below nominal order counts.
The surge in orders for this restricted model occurs against the backdrop of US export controls. More powerful GB102/GB112 series chips remain banned from export to China. While the H200 series was allowed for sale subject to a 25% 'export tax', Beijing initially prohibited imports of such US-vetted chips before granting an exception in early 2026 for Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent to import roughly 400,000 H200 units. With H200s largely reserved for training, inference workloads shifted to the RTX PRO series.