China may approve Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 sales to tech giants
6.7 Investments China may let ByteDance and Alibaba buy Nvidia's RTX Pro 5500 chips, pending government review. The chip could bypass US export controls, but approval details remain uncertain.
China is reportedly considering allowing major tech firms like ByteDance and Alibaba to purchase Nvidia's RTX Pro 5500 chips. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has asked these companies to specify the quantity and intended use of the chips, signaling a potential reopening of the Chinese market for certain Nvidia products that were previously restricted by US export controls. The RTX Pro 5500 is a workstation-focused chip, less advanced than Nvidia's flagship data-center GPUs, but still suitable for AI inference and professional computing tasks. Industry sources suggest this chip may fall outside current US export restrictions, making it eligible for approval. ByteDance is reportedly considering an order of about one million units, which could absorb two quarters of Nvidia's planned supply for China. However, the timing, volume limits, and exact conditions for approval remain unclear. No official confirmation has been made by Chinese authorities or the companies involved, and the approval applies only to this workstation product, not Nvidia's top-tier data center accelerators.
