Nvidia to supply China with only 1% of $70B RTX Pro 5500 GPU orders

Chinese technology companies have placed orders worth nearly $70 billion for Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 graphics cards, but the manufacturer will only be able to fulfill about 1% of these requests in the coming months. According to Bloomberg, major clients including ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent will receive only tens of thousands of units.

• Chinese buyers ordered $70B worth of GPUs, but Nvidia will fulfill just 1% of requests
• High demand driven by powerful specs and 84 GB of GDDR7 memory for AI tasks
• The RTX Pro 5500 model is not subject to current US export restrictions
• First batches of chips are expected to be delivered by late 2026

Soaring demand and production bottlenecks

Demand for the RTX Pro 5500 has significantly exceeded Nvidia's planned production volumes. Chinese clients are reportedly ready to pay $11,000 for each chip, doubling previous estimates of the overall market demand to $70 billion. Due to manufacturing limits, Nvidia can only deliver a tiny fraction of the requested hardware in the near future.

Technical advantages and sanctions workaround

The RTX Pro 5500 attracts Chinese developers due to its combination of computing power and vast memory capacity. It features the same number of CUDA cores as the GeForce RTX 5090 gaming GPU, alongside 84 GB of GDDR7 memory tailored for AI workloads. Unlike specialized chips, US export restrictions do not apply to this model, allowing legal shipments to China.

Delivery timelines and market context

According to Bloomberg sources, Chinese developers expect to receive the first batches of several thousand cards by the end of 2026. Nvidia could potentially supply around 700,000 units by late 2027 if production scales up successfully. Nvidia representatives declined to comment on specific shipment volumes while criticizing existing export regulations.