China’s government is considering allowing some domestic technology companies to buy Nvidia’s new RTX Pro 5500, potentially reopening a path into a market squeezed by restrictions from both Beijing and Washington.
The Information reports that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology asked companies including Alibaba and ByteDance how many chips they want and how they intend to use them. Officials told some prospective buyers that the purchases are expected to be approved, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Approval is not settled. The timing, permitted quantities and standards for deciding which buyers qualify remain unclear. The U.S. government has also not publicly confirmed whether the product falls outside its export restrictions.
ByteDance is considering an order of about 1 million chips
ByteDance is weighing a purchase of roughly 1 million RTX Pro 5500 units, The Information reports, with some potential customers planning eight-chip servers for running AI models. Nvidia is targeting about 500,000 units per quarter for China and aims to begin shipments in late December, meaning an order of that size could take two quarters to fill.
The chips are expected to cost 85,000 yuan to 90,000 yuan, or about $13,000, in China. Nvidia describes the RTX Pro line as workstation hardware rather than its fastest data-center AI platform. The 5500 lacks the high-speed interconnects and premium memory used by Nvidia’s leading accelerator systems, but customers still see it as useful for inference.
The decision would cut across China’s push for domestic hardware
Beijing has restricted Nvidia purchases to support domestic chipmakers and address stated security concerns, while U.S. controls have limited the most capable products Nvidia can sell into China. Nvidia has denied that its chips contain backdoors and argues that the combined restrictions have ceded business to Chinese rivals.
The reported reconsideration reflects a practical constraint: Chinese AI companies are launching services faster than domestic suppliers can provide computing capacity. Approval would not restore Nvidia’s former position in the market, but it could keep more developers using its hardware and software while local alternatives continue to scale.
