Beijing Reportedly Considers Allowing Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 Imports

According to The Information, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is collecting procurement plans from domestic firms regarding Nvidia's RTX Pro 5500 GPU, signaling a potential easing of import restrictions. ByteDance is reportedly considering an order of approximately 1 million units, valued at roughly $13 billion. While the RTX Pro 5500 lacks the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) required for top-tier model training, it is considered sufficient for AI inference tasks. The potential influx of Nvidia hardware has triggered a decline in the stock prices of domestic Chinese chipmakers like Cambricon and SMIC, as investors weigh the impact of renewed competition from foreign chips on local demand.