China reportedly may let Alibaba and ByteDance buy new Nvidia chips
Beijing has signaled it may approve purchases of Nvidia's new RTX Pro 5500 chip for domestic companies including Alibaba and ByteDance. China's tech ministry recently asked some firms to report their plans for acquiring the professional-grade chip.
The Atomic take
Beijing asking Alibaba and ByteDance to report their acquisition plans suggests China is testing whether the RTX Pro 5500 is weak enough to permit without undercutting its push toward domestic silicon from Huawei and Cambricon. That tension matters because Chinese regulators have previously discouraged Nvidia purchases outright, so a reversal here would reopen a market Nvidia had largely written off. Watch whether the tech ministry moves from information-gathering to formal approvals, and how many chips these firms actually commit to buying versus their homegrown alternatives.
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