China Orders Over $35B in NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 GPUs

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 GPUs worth over $35 billion combined, while NVIDIA warns partners they may receive only 5%–10% of requested volumes, according to Reuters. NVIDIA says initial samples are expected in December, followed by commercial shipments in 1Q27. CEO Jensen Huang has warned that NVIDIA’s share of China’s AI accelerator market fell from over 90% to nearly zero amid U.S. export curbs.

Chinese orders have reportedly topped 6 million units, more than double NVIDIA’s potential global production of 3 million RTX PRO 5500 GPUs in 2027. Reuters says the RTX PRO 5500 is primarily designed for professional workstations and remains one of NVIDIA’s most powerful GPUs accessible in China. The Blackwell-based B300 data-center GPU remains unavailable to Chinese customers, while H200 shipments require case-by-case approval and licensing.

Chinese technology firms are seeking the RTX PRO 5500 for AI inference (using a trained model to produce outputs). Inference, such as generating chatbot responses, generally requires less processing power than AI training, making the workstation GPU a viable alternative to the H200 and B300, Reuters reports. NVIDIA is reportedly prioritizing its next-generation Rubin platform for large-scale AI data centers; starting in 2027, Rubin is expected to absorb a substantial share of TSMC manufacturing capacity, leaving less room for RTX PRO 5500 production.

NVIDIA has listed the RTX PRO 5500 on its website for agentic and physical AI workloads. The Blackwell-based GPU uses TSMC’s custom 4N process and has 84GB of memory, according to PNY and NVIDIA. VideoCardz reports it has 21,760 CUDA cores and 84GB of GDDR7, trailing the RTX PRO 6000 by 9.6% in core count and 12.5% in memory capacity. Its bandwidth is 1,398 GB/s, compared with 1,792 GB/s for the RTX PRO 6000.

The RTX PRO 5000 offers 48GB or 72GB of GDDR7 and a 300W power ceiling. VideoCardz says the RTX PRO 5500 bridges the gap between the 5000 and 6000, with near-flagship specifications and a 600W power budget. Its appeal contrasts with the lukewarm reception of NVIDIA’s China-focused RTX 6000D, introduced in mid-2025 to comply with U.S. export controls; Chinese buyers reportedly considered its performance insufficient for its price. The RTX PRO 5500 is priced at around RMB 85,000–90,000 in China, comparable to Huawei’s Ascend 950PR, The Information previously reported.

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 GPUs worth over $35 billion combined, while NVIDIA warns partners they may receive only 5%–10% of requested volumes, according to Reuters. NVIDIA says initial samples are expected in December, followed by commercial shipments in 1Q27. CEO Jensen Huang has warned that NVIDIA’s share of China’s AI accelerator market fell from over 90% to nearly zero amid U.S. export curbs.

Chinese orders have reportedly topped 6 million units, more than double NVIDIA’s potential global production of 3 million RTX PRO 5500 GPUs in 2027. Reuters says the RTX PRO 5500 is primarily designed for professional workstations and remains one of NVIDIA’s most powerful GPUs accessible in China. The Blackwell-based B300 data-center GPU remains unavailable to Chinese customers, while H200 shipments require case-by-case approval and licensing.

Chinese technology firms are seeking the RTX PRO 5500 for AI inference (using a trained model to produce outputs). Inference, such as generating chatbot responses, generally requires less processing power than AI training, making the workstation GPU a viable alternative to the H200 and B300, Reuters reports. NVIDIA is reportedly prioritizing its next-generation Rubin platform for large-scale AI data centers; starting in 2027, Rubin is expected to absorb a substantial share of TSMC manufacturing capacity, leaving less room for RTX PRO 5500 production.

NVIDIA has listed the RTX PRO 5500 on its website for agentic and physical AI workloads. The Blackwell-based GPU uses TSMC’s custom 4N process and has 84GB of memory, according to PNY and NVIDIA. VideoCardz reports it has 21,760 CUDA cores and 84GB of GDDR7, trailing the RTX PRO 6000 by 9.6% in core count and 12.5% in memory capacity. Its bandwidth is 1,398 GB/s, compared with 1,792 GB/s for the RTX PRO 6000.

The RTX PRO 5000 offers 48GB or 72GB of GDDR7 and a 300W power ceiling. VideoCardz says the RTX PRO 5500 bridges the gap between the 5000 and 6000, with near-flagship specifications and a 600W power budget. Its appeal contrasts with the lukewarm reception of NVIDIA’s China-focused RTX 6000D, introduced in mid-2025 to comply with U.S. export controls; Chinese buyers reportedly considered its performance insufficient for its price. The RTX PRO 5500 is priced at around RMB 85,000–90,000 in China, comparable to Huawei’s Ascend 950PR, The Information previously reported.