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China considers relaxing AI chip export curbs to permit ByteDance and Alibaba to purchase Nvidia's RTX Pro 5500 processors, potentially easing domestic tech-giant access to advanced AI hardware.

Loosening of chip export restrictions would allow China's largest tech firms to access cutting-edge Nvidia hardware, reducing the gap in AI infrastructure capability between Chinese and US companies and signaling a policy shift toward balancing innovation with national tech competitiveness.

업계 전문지Slicast · 2026년 9월 27일 19:56 UTC · 미국 · 출처: Crypto Briefing

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China is exploring whether to allow ByteDance and Alibaba to purchase Nvidia's RTX Pro 5500 chips, according to reporting from The Information. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has requested detailed purchase plans from select firms, suggesting Beijing may be opening the door to increased Nvidia hardware imports.

The significance lies in what the RTX Pro 5500 is designed for. Unlike the massive data-center GPU clusters that power frontier AI training, the RTX Pro 5500 is built for high-end professional workstations. Industry executives have noted that this workstation designation could shield the chips from the tightest export restrictions.

The proposal follows a complex history of Chinese chip procurement. Earlier in 2026, Beijing conditionally approved ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent to import over 400,000 Nvidia H200 chips. By August, actual shipments lagged dramatically: each approved company had received only about 10,000 H200 units—roughly 2.5% of the total green-lit volume across ByteDance and Tencent. On the US side, regulators approved shipments of up to 75,000 H200 units for each of ten Chinese firms, yet oversight mechanisms ensured actual volumes remained far below those ceilings.

ByteDance requires compute for TikTok's recommendation algorithms and its expanding AI product portfolio. Alibaba's cloud division, among Asia's largest, has been aggressively scaling its AI model offerings. Neither the Chinese companies nor Nvidia have publicly confirmed official approvals or deliveries for the RTX Pro 5500.

For Nvidia, China remains a vast market opportunity despite regulatory complexity. The company has already engineered export-compliant chip variants for the Chinese market. The RTX Pro 5500 could allow Nvidia to sustain its Chinese revenue while remaining within US regulatory bounds, as workstation chips serve a distinct market segment from the A100s and H100s dominating AI training clusters.

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