Nvidia may deliver 1% of China’s $70 billion GPU order: report

By Elena Vasquez

Nvidia may deliver only about 1% of a reported $70 billion Chinese order for RTX Pro 5500 workstation GPUs over the next few months. Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, put the near-term shipment estimate at “some tens of thousands, or roughly 1%” of the cards ordered.

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent are among the Chinese technology companies set to receive limited quantities. Their orders form part of a demand pool that has far outstripped Nvidia’s planned RTX Pro 5500 production, leaving buyers with a near-term supply gap.

Earlier reports put Chinese spending at $35 billion on orders for more than 3 million GPUs; the newer report doubles that stated value to $70 billion and cites a cost of $11,000 per unit. The $70 billion figure represents reported order value, not the value of cards Nvidia can ship during the near term.

Why can the RTX Pro 5500 ship to China?

The report attributes demand to two factors: performance and shipping eligibility. The RTX Pro 5500 has the same CUDA core count as Nvidia’s flagship RTX 5090 gaming GPU, with 84GB of boosted GDDR7 memory. Unlike the RTX 5090 and AI-focused workstation GPUs such as H200 and B300, it faces no export limit and can ship to China without restrictions.

For Chinese developers, shipping eligibility matters as much as memory capacity. The source places demand within China’s effort to compete with the United States in developing better AI models, and identifies access to GPUs such as the RTX Pro 5500 as central to that effort.

Has Nvidia redirected production?

Separately, the report says Nvidia has halted RTX 5090 production to pivot toward its AI-focused enterprise base. For Chinese buyers, however, RTX Pro 5500 output is the immediate constraint because it is the model they can buy without an export restriction.

When are the GPUs expected to arrive?

Chinese developers expect a first batch of several thousand RTX Pro 5500 GPUs by the end of 2026. The report projects total deliveries of 700,000 units by the end of 2027 as Nvidia increases production, though it cautions that the figure could change.

Those dates leave buyers with a two-stage allocation rather than immediate fulfillment. The first batch covers only several thousand cards, while the larger target requires production to scale through the end of 2027; the report provides no monthly delivery schedule.

What did Nvidia say?

Tom’s Hardware asked Nvidia for comment. An Nvidia spokesman declined to comment on shipment numbers, but said “outdated U.S. export controls, which cover gaming products released nearly half a decade ago” continue to restrict the company, along with “China’s own limits on U.S. imports.”

What changes for procurement teams?

For procurement teams, the immediate bottleneck identified by Bloomberg is production, while Nvidia points to both U.S. controls and Chinese import limits. The Pro 5500 can move to China under U.S. export rules, but planned supply falls far short of reported demand during the next few months. Nvidia did not confirm shipments, and the 2027 forecast remains subject to change as output increases.

The practical outcome is constrained procurement rather than a straightforward market ban. Chinese AI developers have an export-eligible RTX Pro 5500 option, yet near-term deliveries cover only tens of thousands of cards. The 700,000-unit delivery total is not expected until the end of 2027, leaving allocation and delivery timing unresolved in the meantime.