China reportedly may let Alibaba and ByteDance buy new Nvidia chips

China’s government has signalled it may let firms such as Alibaba and ByteDance buy Nvidia’s new RTX Pro 5500 chip. The Information reported the news on Sunday, citing two people familiar with the matter.

China’s tech ministry recently asked some firms how many of the chips they plan to buy, and what for, according to the report. The ministry told some of the companies it intends to approve the purchases.

Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report, and TNW has not independently verified it. None of Nvidia, Alibaba, ByteDance or the ministry had commented publicly by Sunday.

The RTX Pro 5500 is a workstation graphics card that Nvidia unveiled this month. It is built on the company’s Blackwell design and has 84GB of memory.

Nvidia’s sales in China have been limited by US export controls and by curbs from Beijing, which wants to support its own chipmakers.

Earlier this year, the US cleared sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips to Chinese firms. However, ByteDance and Tencent were told to keep the first shipments in Hong Kong , TNW reported in August, rather than bring them into mainland China.