China is considering allowing ByteDance and Alibaba to purchase Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 GPUs, potentially easing semiconductor export restrictions for major domestic tech firms.

Selective export licenses for inference-grade Nvidia GPUs to major Chinese technology companies relieve supply constraints for LLM inference and maintain U.S. market access in China.

업계 전문지Slicast · 2026년 9월 28일 13:38 UTC · 미국 · 출처: qz.com

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China's government has signaled it may allow domestic companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to purchase Nvidia's RTX PRO 5500 chips, which are built for high-end professional computers, according to Reuters.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has reached out to ByteDance, Alibaba, and other companies requesting they submit purchase plans for the RTX PRO 5500. According to The Information, which cited two people familiar with the matter, some of those companies were subsequently informed by the ministry that approval for the purchases is anticipated. Industry executives expect the RTX PRO 5500 to fall outside the scope of U.S. export restrictions.

When Reuters sought comment, Nvidia provided the following statement: "U.S. firms continue to be restricted by a combination of outdated U.S. export controls, which cover gaming products released nearly a half a decade ago, and China's own limits on U.S. imports." Neither Alibaba nor ByteDance responded to Reuters' requests for comment.

The potential chip purchases reflect broader efforts by Chinese AI companies to access Nvidia hardware. ByteDance, Alibaba, Moonshot AI, and Tencent have obtained access to restricted Nvidia chip compute by routing through data centers in countries including Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan. Since U.S. export controls govern the physical transfer of chips rather than remote access to them, this arrangement complies with existing rules.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Commerce Department moved to tighten oversight of this loophole. The Bureau of Industry and Security issued guidance clarifying that export licenses are required for advanced computing chips sold to entities headquartered in China—or whose parent company is headquartered in China—even when those entities are located outside China. However, this guidance addressed chips sold through overseas subsidiaries but did not cover remote access to chips held by third-party cloud providers.

Reuters said it could not verify The Information's reporting and was unable to reach the Chinese government for comment.

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