Key points
- Beijing asked buyers about Nvidia's new workstation chip
- Executives expect it to avoid US restrictions
- Huawei says demand exceeds supply
China has signaled it may let ByteDance, Alibaba (BABA), and other companies buy Nvidia's (NVDA) new RTX PRO 5500 chip, The Information reported on Sunday, citing two people familiar with the matter.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently asked companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to report their plans to buy the chip, according to the report. The ministry told some of them it intends to approve the purchases. Some industry executives expect the RTX PRO 5500 to avoid US export restrictions, the report said. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report.
"US firms continue to be restricted by a combination of outdated US export controls, which cover gaming products released nearly half a decade ago, and China's own limits on US imports," an Nvidia spokesperson told Reuters. Alibaba and ByteDance did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
A workstation chip, not a data center flagship
Nvidia markets the RTX PRO 5500 Blackwell Workstation Edition as a professional graphics card for AI, simulation, and graphics work. It has 84GB of GDDR7 memory, connects over PCI Express, and is designed for rack-mounted workstation deployment, according to Nvidia's product page, which still lists it as coming soon. Nvidia's top data center AI chips use high-bandwidth memory instead.
Chip sales to China have been limited from both sides. The US cleared sales of Nvidia's H200 chips to Chinese companies earlier this year, but ByteDance and Tencent were told to keep the first shipments in Hong Kong rather than bring them into mainland China, TNW reported.
Huawei says demand exceeds supply
Huawei rotating chairman Eric Xu said this month that Chinese demand for its Ascend AI chips is "significantly outstripping supply," as we reported from Huawei Connect. Chinese AI labs are still building around Huawei silicon, including DeepSeek's plan to run 160,000 Ascend chips at one data center.
The timing, quantities, and conditions of any approval remain undisclosed. The report does not establish that purchases have received final Chinese approval or that the chip's status under US export rules has been confirmed.
