A Chinese company's contract for 20,000 Nvidia workstation GPUs offers a documented glimpse of demand as Reuters reports much larger orders that could exceed next year's production.
In an Oct. 13 filing, 天阳宏业科技股份有限公司, identified as Tansun Technology in Reuters' English report, disclosed a contract to buy 20,000 RTX PRO 5500 Blackwell GPUs. The company, listed under stock code 300872, did not name the seller. It warned that overseas technology controls, supply chain conditions and shifts in industry supply and demand could reduce deliveries or delay them, potentially slowing its project.
Reuters reported Oct. 20 that ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent had ordered more than 3 million of the cards, with a combined list value above $35 billion. Citing two people familiar with the matter, the outlet put the price at about $11,400 per card. The companies did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment, and the report gave no order dates or payment status.
Nvidia describes the RTX PRO 5500 as a workstation GPU with 84 GB of GDDR7 memory and lists AI inference among its uses. Its product page marks the card as coming soon and says the specifications are preliminary. Reuters' sources said Chinese buyers wanted the cards primarily to run trained AI models, which generally requires less computing power than training them.
Supply could fall well short of the demand described by Reuters. One source said Nvidia had told partners they might receive only 5% to 10% of the cards they requested. Another said Nvidia had indicated it could produce no more than 3 million worldwide in 2027, while orders from Chinese customers exceeded 6 million. Neither Nvidia's product page nor its response quoted by Reuters confirms those figures. Reuters also reported that Nvidia was expected to devote much of its capacity at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to its Rubin platform from 2027.
U.S. restrictions form part of the backdrop. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) said Jan. 13 that export license applications for Nvidia H200, AMD MI325X and similar chips could be reviewed case by case if specified security requirements were met.
Reuters' sources said Nvidia had told customers to expect early samples in December 2026 and commercial deliveries in the first quarter of 2027. Nvidia's product page gives no delivery timetable.
