China Weighs Reopening Nvidia Chip Market After Alibaba and ByteDance Inquiry

Nvidia's stock is expected to react on Monday after reports emerged that China may allow Alibaba and ByteDance to buy a new Nvidia chip. The chip in question is the RTX PRO 5500, a powerful card designed for professional computers.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has reportedly asked the two firms how many cards they want and why. According to The Information, citing two people familiar with the matter, Chinese AI firms are short of computing power for their chatbots and agents.

Nvidia markets the card for AI agents, AI inference, and simulation. It carries 84 GB of memory and draws up to 600 watts. This is not a data-center chip, which is what US export curbs targeted. If China allows the sale of these cards, it would be on top of Nvidia's current $108 billion forecast for the quarter.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang previously said that the company could only serve a market if the country wants them to. This statement was made after Beijing told firms to stop buying Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000D in September, causing the stock to fall 2.6% that day.