NVDA Stock In Focus: China Reportedly Weighs Letting ByteDance, Alibaba Buy Some Nvidia AI Chips

Nvidia’s potential China opening adds another catalyst for investors as Beijing weighs purchases of the company’s lower-end GPUs.

• Beijing is considering allowing select Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s RTX PRO 5500 GPUs, according to The Information.
• ByteDance could seek about 1 million chips, with shipments reportedly expected to begin in late December.
• Nvidia remains caught between U.S. export controls and China’s restrictions as investors watch for signs of a broader market reopening.

Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) could get another China-related catalyst following a media report that Beijing is considering allowing some domestic companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba, to buy Nvidia's RTX PRO 5500 GPUs.

Nvidia shares initially rose in overnight trading late Sunday before reversing course to trade 0.4% lower.

China Signals Potential Approval

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology asked companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to submit plans to purchase the chips, The Information reported Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The ministry later told some companies that the government intends to approve the purchases, per the report. Industry executives expect the RTX PRO 5500 to fall outside current U.S. export restrictions, the report said.

Nvidia’s China Issue

The development comes amid a long-running and highly uncertain standoff over Nvidia’s ability to sell advanced processors in China. 

Washington has progressively tightened restrictions on exporting high-performance AI chips to China, forcing Nvidia to develop modified products for the Chinese market. Beijing has also imposed its own limits on some U.S. technology imports, further complicating Nvidia’s access to one of its largest markets.

“US firms continue to be restricted by a combination of outdated US export controls, which cover gaming products released nearly half a decade ago, and China’s own limits on US imports,” an Nvidia spokesperson told Reuters.

Why The RTX PRO 5500 Matters

The RTX PRO 5500 sits in a different category from Nvidia’s most advanced AI accelerators but is still powerful enough for AI workloads. The chip is designed for high-end professional computing, giving Chinese companies another potential Nvidia option as access to the company’s leading AI processors remains restricted.

Nvidia’s H200 chip won U.S. approval but initially remained stuck under Beijing’s restrictions. Nvidia has reportedly shipped a limited number of H200 chips to approved Chinese customers, according to a Reuters report in August.

ByteDance Weighs 1 Million Chips

Now, the chip giant is reportedly planning to begin shipments in late December, with China receiving roughly 500,000 chips per quarter. ByteDance alone is considering an order of about 1 million chips, a volume that would take approximately two quarters to fulfill, according to The Information.

Companies are expected to deploy eight RTX PRO 5500 chips per server to run AI models. Each chip is priced at roughly 85,000-90,000 yuan, or about $13,000, putting it around the same price range as Huawei’s Ascend 950PR.

For Nvidia, any approval would offer a potentially meaningful opening in China, although the regulatory picture remains fluid and the company’s market access remains subject to both U.S. and Chinese restrictions.

Retail View On NVDA

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment for NVDA dipped over the weekend and was ‘bearish’ as of late Sunday, although optimistic remarks were beginning to emerge on the latest buzz.

“$NVDA I don’t think Wall Street or anyone understands how big opening up China is to Nvidia,” a trader said. “It should be a 300 tomorrow to stock price and it’s still grossly undervalued. Any day it’s gonna just pop and go flying and everyone will chase it.”

“NVDA will be $300 by end of year & $400+ in 2027,” said another.

NVDA stock closed at $225.07 on Friday and is up nearly 21% year to date, compared to the 90% gains in the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX). 

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