ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent Just Ordered $35 Billion of Nvidia Chips
China's tech giants just placed chip orders so massive that Nvidia admitted it cannot guarantee filling them, and the stock barely flinched. The reason why reveals something surprising about where Nvidia's real growth story is headed.
China’s largest technology companies have ordered more hardware from Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) than Nvidia says it can build in a year. On October 20, 2026, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that ByteDance, Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) and Tencent ordered more than 3 million Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 workstation graphics cards.
At about $11,400 per card, those orders are worth more than $35 billion at list price. Total orders from Chinese customers have exceeded 6 million units.
Nvidia has not confirmed the figures, and none of its recent 8-K filings reveal the order. Its guidance for the current quarter, $108.0 billion plus or minus 2%, explicitly excludes any China data center compute revenue.
The stock barely reacted. Nvidia closed October 20 at $216.47, down 0.29%, after a 5.27% decline in the week through that date. That muted response looks correct once you see how little of this demand Nvidia can fill and how far off the deliveries are.
What Was Ordered and What Was Never Signed
These are reported orders that remain outside any disclosed contract, booked revenue, or guidance. Nvidia told customers and partners it “cannot guarantee that it can fill the orders.”
Early samples are due in December, with “commercial deliveries beginning in the first quarter of 2027.” Nothing ships within the fiscal quarter Nvidia reports next.
Buyers want this card because Nvidia’s top Blackwell chip, the B300, is barred from China and its prior flagship, the H200, is licensed case by case. The RTX PRO 5500 is weaker than both, and buyers want it “primarily for AI inference,” which means running already-trained models to answer user requests.
Demand reaches past the big three. Shenzhen-listed Tansun Technology disclosed on October 13 a deal for 20,000 of the cards from an unidentified seller.
Why Nvidia Will Spend Its Wafers on Rubin
One source said partners might receive only 5% to 10% of what they requested. Nvidia indicated it can produce no more than 3 million of these cards globally in 2027, well below Chinese orders alone.
The constraint is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM) capacity, much of which Nvidia is expected to commit to Rubin in 2027. TSMC declined to comment.
Management said its revenue opportunity rises from $25 billion with Blackwell to $40 billion with Vera Rubin per gigawatt. It already called its projected fiscal 2028 growth of approximately 70% a “supply-constrained outlook.”
Even a partial fill would be small against Data Center revenue of $89.02 billion in a single quarter. The orders signal pricing power and a backlog. They come in a market many investors had dismissed, and the expansion that creates that backlog has to be powered and cooled by somebody (we covered seven of those suppliers in a free report on the AI infrastructure trade).
Policy Risk Runs in Both Directions
An Nvidia spokesperson said Chinese workstation chipmakers have seen “unprecedented growth since 2022” because U.S. firms face “outdated US export controls” and Chinese import limits. Nvidia wants looser rules, so that statement is advocacy.
Beijing recently proposed its own export controls on AI technologies, and Taiwan plans to outlaw unauthorized AI chip exports, while ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, and China’s industry ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
What Rubin and China Mean for Nvidia Investors
Rubin drives the investment case more than China does. These orders sit entirely outside guidance, so any shipped volume is upside to a business that just reported quarterly revenue of $96.22 billion, up 105.8% year over year.
At roughly 44 times earnings, the stock trades at a premium valuation, though the recent pullback reduces it slightly.
The test is the earnings report expected on November 18, a date Nvidia has not confirmed. If management puts China compute revenue into guidance or confirms RTX PRO 5500 volumes, the story moves from reported to booked, and if it stays silent, these orders remain a demand signal only.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Omor Ibne Ehsan is a writer at 24/7 Wall St. He is a self-taught investor with a focus on growth, cyclical, and dividend equities that have strong fundamentals, value, and long-term potential. He also has an interest in high-risk, high-reward investments such as penny stocks.
