Chinese authorities are reportedly preparing to approve the import of Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 professional graphics cards. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China has requested local firms, including Alibaba Holding and ByteDance, to submit their procurement plans and justifications for using the new hardware.
The RTX Pro 5500 is based on the Blackwell architecture, featuring 21,760 CUDA cores and 84 GB of GDDR7 memory with a 416-bit bus. Although officially intended for workstations, the card is seen as a potential resource for AI model training, a sector where domestic Chinese supply currently falls short of demand.
Analysts from Saxo suggest that this potential move reflects a pragmatic approach by Beijing to bolster its national AI industry. However, the final outcome remains uncertain, as US authorities have previously maintained strict export restrictions on Blackwell-generation chips to China.
