Chinese firms buy Nvidia gaming and workstation chips

TrendForce reports that Chinese technology companies purchased more than 1 million Nvidia gaming and workstation chips this year.[1] The reported models include the RTX Pro 6000D, RTX Pro 5000 and RTX 5090.[1] These processors were not originally designed for advanced AI systems, but they can handle simpler AI workloads.[1]

The Nvidia processors generally perform below advanced Chinese AI chips such as Huawei’s flagship Ascend 910C across most computing tasks.[1] They can, however, process the prefill stage of inference: the point when a model processes a user’s input before decoding and generating a response.[1] For teams assessing these chips, that distinction matters: reported suitability for a simpler workload does not establish that they can replace more capable accelerators across an AI system.[1]

China’s domestic AI chip production more than doubled this year, with Huawei, Alibaba, Baidu and Cambricon among the companies driving the increase.[1] TrendForce expects China’s AI chip supply to reach 3.5 million units in 2026, including about 1 million manufactured overseas, while estimating total demand at well over 5 million units.[1] Huawei Rotating Chairman Eric Xu said in September that the company could not produce enough AI computing hardware to meet domestic demand; the shortage led Huawei to prioritize Chinese customers over overseas expansion.[1]

Nvidia is reportedly preparing the RTX Pro 5500, expected to outperform its existing China offerings and better support basic AI computing.[1] The chip is designed primarily for engineering and graphics work, uses GDDR7 instead of the high-bandwidth memory found in server-class AI accelerators, and was reported to cost about RMB 85,000–90,000 in China.[1] The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology requested intended purchase volumes and usage plans, and may approve domestic purchases, including by ByteDance and Alibaba.[1] ByteDance was reportedly considering about 1 million units; Nvidia reportedly planned quarterly shipments of about 500,000 starting in late December, with orders due by September 30 to secure supply.[1]