[ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent Place Orders for Over 3 Million NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 GPUs, Totaling Over $35 Billion] BlockBeats News, October 20: According to a Reuters report, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 workstation GPUs. At an estimated price of $11,400 per unit, the total order value exceeds $35 billion. These chips comply with U.S. export control regulations and are among the high-performance NVIDIA chips still available for purchase by Chinese buyers. Due to demand from Chinese tech companies far exceeding NVIDIA's planned production capacity, the company has informed customers and partners that it cannot guarantee full delivery of orders. Sources indicate that NVIDIA may only be able to meet 5% to 10% of the requested quantities. It is also estimated that global production of RTX PRO 5500 GPUs will not exceed 3 million units by 2027, while total orders from Chinese customers have already surpassed 6 million units. The RTX PRO 5500 is positioned for professional workstations and offers lower performance compared to data center chips like the H200 and B300, which are designed for large-scale AI training and inference. According to sources, Chinese tech companies primarily plan to use these GPUs for AI inference, which involves running pre-trained models and generating responses. As higher-performance chips remain subject to export restrictions and domestic AI computing power becomes increasingly constrained, alternative products that were previously less attractive are now gaining popularity. On the supply side, NVIDIA is expected to provide early samples of the RTX PRO 5500 in December, with commercial deliveries starting in the first quarter of 2027. However, beginning in 2027, NVIDIA plans to allocate most of TSMC's production capacity to its next-generation Rubin data center platform, which could further limit the supply of these GPUs. This wave of orders highlights the continued strong demand for AI computing power in China despite U.S. export controls and underscores the supply-demand gap for compliant alternative chips. [Original Article Link]