China’s tech ministry asked companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to report their plans to buy Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5500, The Information reported on September 27. It told some of them that it intends to approve the purchases, according to the report. Reuters could not verify the report. An Nvidia spokesperson said US firms remain restricted by outdated US export controls and by China’s own limits on imports.
New to this? Read it in simple words
- Nvidia makes chips that are used to build and run AI. Rules from the US and from China limit what it can sell in China.
- A news report says China asked big companies how many new Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 cards they want.
- The ministry told some companies it plans to approve the purchases.
- Nvidia, the companies and the ministry have not confirmed this.
- Export controls
- Government rules that stop certain products from being sold to other countries.
- Workstation GPU
- A powerful graphics chip for professional computers, also used to run AI models.
- GDDR7
- A fast type of memory used on graphics cards.
What The Information reports
According to The Information, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently asked companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to report their plans to buy Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5500. It cites two people familiar with the matter. The Next Web’s summary says the ministry asked how many chips the firms plan to buy, and what for.
The ministry told some companies that the government intends to approve the purchases, The Information said. Some industry executives expect the RTX Pro 5500 to avoid US export restrictions, the report added.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Alibaba and ByteDance did not respond to its requests for comment, and it could not reach the Chinese government.
Card details from Nvidia’s product page; the ministry’s steps as The Information reported them.
Nvidia’s answer, and the card
An Nvidia spokesperson told Reuters that US firms remain restricted by “outdated US export controls”, which cover gaming products released nearly half a decade ago. China’s own limits on US imports also hold them back, the spokesperson said. Nvidia neither confirmed nor denied the ministry’s process.
The RTX Pro 5500 Blackwell Workstation Edition is a professional GPU with 84 GB of GDDR7 memory. Nvidia says it is built for rack-mounted workstations and for LLM inference, AI agents and simulation. Its product page lists the card as “coming soon”, with preliminary specifications and no price.
It sits below the RTX Pro 6000, which has 96 GB, in Nvidia’s workstation line. Both draw up to 600 watts.
Why it matters for Nvidia
Earlier this year the US cleared sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips to Chinese firms. But ByteDance and Tencent were told to keep the first shipments in Hong Kong rather than bring them to the mainland, The Next Web reported in August.
Beijing has also limited purchases of US chips to support its own chipmakers. A signal that it will approve orders for a new Nvidia card would therefore be a change, if it is confirmed.
The Information’s article is behind a paywall. Neither the ministry nor the companies have commented publicly.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1Research · September 27, 2026China weighs allowing ByteDance, Alibaba to buy new Nvidia chips, The Information reports Reuters
- 2Research · September 27, 2026China Weighs Allowing Purchases of New Nvidia Chips by ByteDance, Alibaba The Information
- 3Research · September 27, 2026China reportedly may let Alibaba and ByteDance buy new Nvidia chips The Next Web
- 4Primary source · Accessed September 27, 2026NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 Blackwell Workstation Edition Nvidia
We read Reuters’s report, which carries Nvidia’s comment, and The Next Web’s summary, and checked the card’s details on Nvidia’s product page. The Information’s article is paywalled, so its claims are as Reuters and The Next Web relay them. The ministry, Alibaba and ByteDance have not commented.