China May Allow Nvidia (NVDA) RTX PRO 5500 Sales to Alibaba and ByteDance

China Weighs RTX PRO 5500 Approvals

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has asked Alibaba and ByteDance to state how many Nvidia (NVDA) RTX PRO 5500 cards they want and why, according to a Sunday report citing two people familiar with the matter. The inquiry could reopen a Chinese market that United States export rules have largely closed to the company's advanced silicon, and the stock gets its first chance to react when Wall Street opens on Monday after closing Friday at $225.07. The RTX PRO 5500 is a workstation card, not the data-center hardware Nvidia once sold to China in bulk. Its specifications explain why it slips through the existing net: the part, which Nvidia's own product page markets for AI agents, AI inference and simulation, carries 84 GB of memory and draws up to 600 watts. Because it is classified as a workstation component, it sits outside the data-center chips targeted by US export curbs. Chinese AI firms are short of the computing power needed to run their chatbots and agents, which is what prompted the ministry to canvass demand directly. The company has spent two years engineering China-compliant variants only to see demand drift toward domestic alternatives, making even a narrow, workstation-class approval commercially meaningful. Neither Beijing nor either company has confirmed the plan, and the report gave no indication of how many cards would be allowed or when approvals might arrive. It also offered no sign that larger data-center chips would follow. Beijing's decision to canvass volume through the companies themselves suggests any reopening would be measured and reversible — a managed tap rather than a wholesale lifting of restrictions.

Diplomatic Thaw Meets Rival Pressure

The reported shift lands days after President Donald Trump hosted Xi Jinping in Washington. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said national-security export controls were taken “off the table” at the summit. Any approval for RTX PRO 5500 purchases would test how far that thaw extends into semiconductors — and how much of it survives contact with the chip hierarchy. Competitive pressure gives Beijing little reason to hurry. Huawei and Cambricon hold nearly 80% of China's AI server market, according to analysts cited in the reporting, and local rivals keep compounding: Enflame's Shanghai debut this month added another domestic option. Nvidia has felt that leverage from the other direction before. In September 2025, Beijing told firms to stop buying the RTX Pro 6000D, and the stock fell 2.6% that day. “I think that we could only be in service of a market if the country wants us to be,” CEO Jensen Huang said at the time. The financial asymmetry now runs in Nvidia's favor. Its $108 billion revenue guide for the current quarter — a forecast Jensen Huang tied to AI hitting a production ramp — assumes zero China data-center chip revenue, so any permitted sales would accrue on top of existing expectations. Wall Street positioning is already one-sided: all 31 analysts tracked by TipRanks rate NVDA a buy, with an average price target of $324.32. Shares have swung on China headlines in both directions, including a 3% dip this month after Trump phoned Huang live on air to call AI fears a hoax. A permission slip for even one product line would mark the first incremental China revenue the market has been able to underwrite since the curbs tightened. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

Monday Open Carries Asymmetric Stakes

COINOTAG's read: MIIT canvassing demand is the most concrete signal yet that Beijing's calculus is shifting from outright substitution toward controlled access. The structure of the opening matters more than its size — workstation-class volume, if approved, lands on top of a guide that already assumes zero China revenue, making any permit pure upside to estimates. But headline risk cuts both ways, as the 2.6% selloff of September 2025 showed, and chasing Monday's open risks FOMO-driven entries into a story with no card counts, no timeline and no signal that data-center chips follow. With Nvidia separately exploring a stake of up to $10 billion in Anthropic's IPO, the company is locking in demand elsewhere while its China question stays open.