ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent order over $35B in Nvidia AI chips

China’s largest tech companies just placed one of the biggest GPU orders on record. ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have reportedly ordered more than 3 million Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, worth over $35 billion combined. Reuters reported the orders exclusively on October 20, 2026, citing multiple insiders with knowledge of the deals. A workstation card doing data center work The RTX PRO 5500 is not Nvidia’s flagship AI chip. It is a workstation graphics card priced at approximately $11,400 per unit. That modest positioning is exactly why Chinese buyers want it. The card is one of the few powerful Nvidia GPUs that Chinese companies can still legally purchase. US export controls block Chinese buyers from Nvidia’s Blackwell B300 chips entirely. The Hopper-based H200 is not fully banned, but each export goes through case-by-case licensing review. The RTX PRO 5500 is built mainly for AI inference rather than large-scale training in data centers. Demand runs straight into a supply wall The three named companies are not the only ones lining up. Total orders for the RTX PRO 5500 from Chinese customers have surpassed 6 million units, according to the Reuters report. Nvidia’s planned ...