$70 billion Nvidia GPU orders queue up, Chinese clients expected to receive only 1% in four months

Beating AI News Flash: Chinese tech giants including Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance have cumulatively ordered approximately 6 million NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, with a total value of about $70 billion. However, due to production capacity constraints, they are expected to receive only tens of thousands of units in the next four months, accounting for roughly 1% of the order volume.

These orders were first revealed back in October. At the time, NVIDIA estimated it could only meet 5%–10% of demand, and the near-term delivery situation has now become even more severe: possibly only a few thousand units will arrive before the end of 2026, with tens of thousands more delivered in February next year.

The RTX PRO 5500 was originally a workstation graphics card equipped with 84GB of VRAM, with performance inferior to data center GPUs such as the H200 and B300. But under U.S. export controls, Chinese companies have no choice but to settle for second best and order this graphics card in large quantities.

To make matters worse, NVIDIA is prioritizing TSMC's production capacity for its more profitable next-generation Rubin chips, and global production of the RTX PRO 5500 next year may be fewer than 3 million units — unable to satisfy even half of Chinese orders.

Some Chinese customers estimate that by the end of 2027, they may have cumulatively received about 700,000 units, accounting for only 12% of the order volume.