The Information/Reuters: China may let ByteDance and Alibaba buy a new Nvidia chip for high-end professional computers, a potential partial easing of AI chip access
What happened
The Information reported on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026 (carried by Reuters) that China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has asked ByteDance, Alibaba and other firms to submit purchase plans for Nvidia's new RTX Pro 5500 chip and has told some companies the government intends to approve the purchases, citing two people familiar with the matter. ByteDance is reportedly weighing an order of about 1 million RTX Pro 5500 units for AI workloads, while Nvidia is targeting production of roughly 500,000 units per quarter for China with shipments expected from late December 2026. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report; an Nvidia spokesperson commented only that U.S. firms remain restricted by "a combination of outdated US export controls ... and China's own limits on US imports," and ByteDance, Alibaba and the ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
Why it matters & what’s next are part of Pro, along with the audio summary.
Start your free 14-day trialWho’s affected
- NVDA — potential new compliant China revenue channel; ByteDance reportedly weighing ~1M units against planned ~500K/quarter China supply, supporting incremental volumes on top of already-stretched AI demand
- BABA (Alibaba) — named as a potential buyer, would gain scarce AI compute capacity
- ByteDance (private) — named buyer; ~1M-unit order would be one of the largest China-side Nvidia purchases since restrictions tightened
- Chinese domestic GPU stocks — perceived substitution threat: SMIC fell 3.7%, Moore Threads 6.3%, Cambricon 5.7% on Sept. 28 per market reports
- AMD — second-order U.S. competitor exposed to the same China-access dynamics