It is reported that ByteDance plans to purchase 1 million units of NVIDIA's new GPUs, and the acquisition may be approved.

Beating AI Express News: The Information, citing two people familiar with the matter, reports that Chinese officials are considering allowing companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to purchase NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) recently requested these firms to submit their planned purchase volumes and intended uses, and has indicated to some companies its intention to approve the applications. However, the exact approval timeline and allowed purchase quantities remain undetermined. ByteDance is considering procuring around 1 million units of the RTX PRO 5500, with the final number subject to approval results and NVIDIA’s supply capacity. Unlike data center AI chips such as the H200, this card is NVIDIA’s newly launched Blackwell workstation GPU this month, equipped with 84GB GDDR7 video memory. NVIDIA positions it as a rackmount workstation product, explicitly supporting large model inference, AI agents and generative AI. The report also notes that some Chinese buyers plan to install 8 RTX PRO 5500 per server to run AI models. NVIDIA plans to begin shipments in late December, aiming to supply approximately 500,000 units to China every quarter. If ByteDance ultimately purchases 1 million units, its order alone would equal NVIDIA’s planned China supply for two quarters. Chinese enterprises still face a shortage of AI computing power; Huawei’s rotating chairman Xu Zhijun stated last week that its AI computing equipment production capacity cannot even meet domestic demand. However, the RTX PRO 5500 faces another hurdle to entering China: the US government has not publicly confirmed whether it complies with existing export restrictions, with only some industry insiders expecting it to be allowed.