NVIDIA will only be able to deliver around 1% of the RTX PRO 5500 cards ordered by China’s biggest tech companies over the coming months, on orders worth roughly $70 billion, according to a Bloomberg report published on November 4, 2026. Deliveries would ramp up gradually to around 700,000 units by the end of 2027, leaving Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance waiting months for a card designed to comply with U.S. export restrictions.
China’s wait for the RTX PRO 5500, in 20 seconds
- Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance have reportedly ordered around $70 billion worth of RTX PRO 5500 cards.
- NVIDIA would deliver only about 1% in the coming months, and around 700,000 units by the end of 2027.
- The figures come from Bloomberg; NVIDIA hasn’t confirmed them.
The information comes from Bloomberg and has been picked up by, among others, Wccftech, which describes it as a likely rumor. NVIDIA hasn’t publicly commented on the order figures or the delivery timeline. The demand isn’t new: back in October, China ordered 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards and NVIDIA couldn’t keep up. What Bloomberg adds now is the scale of the delay.
A workstation card built to clear the filter
The RTX PRO 5500 is a professional GPU from the Blackwell family with 21,760 CUDA cores — the same count as the consumer RTX 5090 — and 84 GB of GDDR7 memory. That amount of memory is what makes it appealing for inference on large AI models, even though it doesn’t match data-center accelerators with HBM memory.
Its appeal to Chinese companies is regulatory. According to Wccftech, the card complies with U.S. export rules, and companies prefer it to the H200 to avoid licensing hurdles. In practice, it’s one of the most powerful options from NVIDIA that they can buy without depending on a case-by-case authorization.
That demand coexists with a gray market. Cloud News previously reported that security firm Lava detected 32 NVIDIA B300 GPUs tied to China Telecom IP addresses, a sign that some restricted accelerators are reaching China through other channels.
Why they aren’t waiting for Huawei
Beijing is pushing companies in the country to use domestic chips, and alternatives exist: Huawei’s Ascend accelerators or Iluvatar CoreX’s Tiangai 300 GPU. However, according to Wccftech, these manufacturers depend on SMIC, whose low manufacturing yields and shipment delays limit supply.
The other factor is software. Wccftech’s author argues that models, runtimes, and inference stacks have been built for about 15 years around CUDA, NVIDIA’s platform, and that switching is expensive. The outlet also credits NVIDIA with better manufacturing performance and cluster stability, concluding its edge could last a decade — these are the outlet’s own assessments, not Bloomberg data. Huawei, for its part, is working to narrow the gap between Ascend and CUDA and cut that migration cost.
What’s still unclear
The figures should be read with caution. The $70 billion is the value of orders, not confirmed sales, and the delivery pace is a Bloomberg projection. Neither Bloomberg, as reported by Wccftech, nor NVIDIA publicly explain what’s constraining deliveries. Any change to Washington’s export rules or Beijing’s procurement policy could alter the timeline.
Frequently asked questions
What is the NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500?
A professional GPU from the Blackwell family with 21,760 CUDA cores and 84 GB of GDDR7, which, according to Wccftech, complies with U.S. export rules and can be sold in China.
How much have Chinese companies ordered?
According to Bloomberg, Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance have reportedly ordered around $70 billion worth of RTX PRO 5500 cards. NVIDIA hasn’t confirmed this.
When will they receive the cards?
Bloomberg projects NVIDIA will deliver only around 1% in the coming months, with deliveries climbing gradually to about 700,000 units by the end of 2027.
Sources:
This article is also available in Spanish: “Las tecnológicas chinas esperarán meses por la RTX PRO 5500 de NVIDIA“, on revistacloud.com.
