Chinese Tech Giants Order Over $35B in Nvidia Chips, Report Says

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have placed orders for more than three million Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, with a combined sticker value exceeding $35 billion, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Reuters. The figure captures China’s appetite for AI computing power, but it does not mean Nvidia has shipped $35 billion of hardware or booked that amount as revenue.

The October 20 Reuters report says the three companies are seeking more than three million cards while total orders from Chinese customers have topped six million. The RTX PRO 5500 is less powerful than Nvidia’s most advanced data-centre accelerators, but it remains available under US export restrictions that have sharply narrowed the options for Chinese buyers.

The supply constraint is the central fact in this story. Reuters reported that Nvidia has told customers and partners it cannot guarantee it will fill the orders because requested quantities exceed planned production. One source said partners could receive only 5% to 10% of what they requested; another said Nvidia indicated it could make no more than three million RTX PRO 5500 cards worldwide in 2027. Those are reported estimates, not a confirmed company forecast.

The $35 billion value also comes from multiplying ordered units by an approximate $11,400 card price. It is a measure of potential demand at sticker prices, not a disclosed contract total or a timetable for payments. If production falls short, customers may receive far fewer chips than requested. Investors and readers should be wary of treating the headline figure as a sale already completed.

For ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent, the rush reflects the heavy computing needs of model development, cloud services and consumer AI products. A chip that is weaker than the top-tier systems can still be useful for some inference and other workloads, especially when access to faster alternatives is limited. Orders may also be a way to secure a place in a constrained supply queue, though the report does not establish how much computing capacity each company will ultimately receive.

The reported demand complicates a simple story that Nvidia has been pushed out of China. US controls have made its strongest accelerators difficult or impossible to obtain there, while domestic suppliers have gained ground. TechBooky recently reported that Nvidia’s AI accelerator shipments in China fell as Huawei narrowed the gap. Yet Chinese technology groups still appear keen to buy export-compliant Nvidia hardware in large volumes.

That creates a difficult balancing act for Nvidia. It must serve a deep pool of Chinese demand within changing trade rules while directing manufacturing capacity toward newer products for customers elsewhere. For Chinese buyers, the uncertainty over delivery makes it risky to plan an AI buildout around requested Nvidia units alone. Domestic chips and other suppliers may become more important, even where companies would prefer to use Nvidia’s software and hardware ecosystem.

The immediate headline is the size of the orders. The more consequential question is how many chips Nvidia can legally and physically deliver, and when. Until those answers are clear, $35 billion should be read as reported demand under severe supply constraints, not as realised revenue.