China's government is considering allowing domestic companies to import Nvidia's latest artificial intelligence chips, according to reports. Beijing has restrained imports of U.S. semiconductors to nurture its domestic industry, but the move is seen as a pragmatic turn toward tapping the performance of cutting-edge AI chips from Nvidia and AMD. With U.S.-China competition in AI intensifying, it remains unclear whether the Trump administration will agree to export Nvidia's newest chips.
The Information reported on the 27th, citing sources, that China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told domestic companies including ByteDance and Alibaba that it plans to approve purchases of Nvidia's new AI chip, the RTX Pro 5500. The ministry, which oversees technology policy, asked companies to report how many chips they wanted and for what purpose, and told some firms that the government could approve their purchases.
The RTX Pro 5500 is a workstation chip Nvidia designed for engineers and graphic designers. It targets high-end computers and is not a server-class AI accelerator for developing and running large-scale AI models. While AI accelerators use cutting-edge memory such as high-bandwidth memory, this chip carries GDDR7, a graphics DRAM product from the conventional memory lineup.
Sources said ByteDance is considering an order of about 1 million chips. The Information reported that Nvidia plans to ship about 500,000 units per quarter to China starting in late December and has told customers they must order by Sept. 30 to secure supply. The RTX Pro 5500 sells in China for 85,000 to 90,000 yuan (17 million to 18 million won), similar to the price of the Ascend 950PR chip Huawei released earlier this year.
President Donald Trump had controlled semiconductor exports, citing security threats from China, before allowing Nvidia to resume sales of the China-bound H200 late last year in connection with the sale of TikTok's U.S. business. The H200 is an older model but was seen as offering higher performance than Chinese products. Beijing, however, had also blocked purchases of high-performance Nvidia chips as it sought to build up domestic chipmakers such as Huawei.
Eight Chips Combined Can Serve AI Data Centers, With Uses in AI Agents
Chinese big tech firms want the RTX Pro 5500 because installing several of them together allows the chips to be used in data center servers. The Information said that "some of the prospective buyers plan to install the chips in servers to support customers running AI models," adding that "one buyer plans to fit eight RTX Pro 5500s in each server, a configuration that lets them run together on larger AI models." Companies such as ByteDance could use them not only for chatbot responses, AI agents and document summaries but also for video captions, translation, editing and generation, as well as advertising production and content moderation. The scale, however, falls short of training done with GPUs built specifically for AI data centers, such as the B200 and GB200.
Beijing also appears to acknowledge that it has little choice but to rely on U.S. AI chips for the most advanced AI models. Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo, told Bloomberg that the possibility of allowing Nvidia chip purchases points to a pragmatic approach given how aggressively China has pursued domestic chip self-sufficiency, and that while domestic chip technology is advancing quickly, gaps remain in performance, supply and the AI ecosystem that Nvidia can fill.
If exports of the new chip to China are permitted, Nvidia could seek a rebound in its China business. Nvidia ceded ground to Chinese rivals such as Huawei after the export controls took effect, with Chief Executive Jensen Huang saying its share of China's high-performance AI chip market had fallen from 95% to zero. The Information said the industry expects Washington not to block exports because the RTX Pro 5500, though new, is not a cutting-edge AI chip.
Whether the U.S. will actually allow Nvidia chip sales remains uncertain. The RTX Pro 5500 can be used to run large AI systems, and Trump recently took an openly hard line on China, saying it is China that benefits from slowing down AI. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also said earlier that semiconductor export controls were not discussed in negotiations with China. Because Washington keeps tightening export controls on high-performance chips, analysts said that even if the purchase plans are approved, that would not mean an easing of the U.S. technology blockade on AI chips for China.
