China Orders Top 6 Million Nvidia Cards, 2027 Supply May Reach 3 Million
Key Facts
Customer orders in China have topped 6 million RTX PRO 5500 cards, while partners were told potential global production may not exceed 3 million cards in 2027, according to a Reuters report published on October 20, 2026. That puts Chinese demand at more than twice the potential upper limit for global production next year. Reuters said ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent together ordered more than 3 million cards, with a list value exceeding $35 billion. These figures reflect the scale of orders the companies sought to secure, while the quantities to be allocated or delivered remain uncertain. The report said Nvidia is not guaranteeing that it will fulfill the orders in full, making the gap between demand and production capacity the central issue.
The three companies’ orders have a combined list value exceeding $35 billion, according to Reuters, but that represents the orders’ list-price value and does not establish that these amounts will translate into revenue or completed sales. The report said one source indicated that partners may receive only 5% to 10% of the quantities they ordered. Reuters quoted the source as saying Nvidia told partners they “may receive only 5% to 10% of the quantities ordered.” That means total orders alone do not determine actual deliveries, as the amount reaching each partner will depend on the quantities that can be supplied. The estimate of 3 million cards in 2027 was also presented as a potential ceiling for global production, not a confirmed production figure.
The RTX PRO 5500 differs from newer AI accelerators designed for large data center clusters; it is a card for workstations and high-end professional computers, according to the report. Reuters reported that the B300 card is not permitted to be sold to China, while H200 shipments are subject to review and licensing on a case-by-case basis. In this context, the workstation card is among the products Chinese companies can target amid restrictions on some advanced accelerators. Nvidia’s official page says the Blackwell version of the RTX PRO 5500 has 84 gigabytes of GDDR7 memory. The company lists language model inference among the card’s supported applications.
Reuters reported in September that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had asked companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to submit plans for purchasing RTX PRO 5500 cards. The agency reported at the time that the ministry had asked companies to disclose those plans, while noting that Reuters could not immediately verify the report. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Nvidia said it had been effectively shut out of China’s data center computing market by the end of the second quarter of its fiscal 2027. The company added that some unrestricted products, such as gaming and workstation cards, could still be shipped to China. The filing distinguishes the company’s position in the data center computing market from the continued shipment of other GPU categories.
Nvidia expects to send initial samples of the card in December 2026, with commercial deliveries due to begin in the first quarter of 2027, according to sources cited by Reuters. That timeline remains an expectation reported by the agency’s sources, not confirmation of the quantities that will reach each customer. On manufacturing, the report said a large share of TSMC’s capacity in 2027 is expected to go to the Rubin platform. It also said the RTX 6000D card was discontinued and its price in the Chinese market doubled, according to one source. That precedent offers an indication of earlier supply pressures in China, but does not establish the price of the RTX PRO 5500 or the volume of future supply.