China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has signalled it may allow domestic companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to buy Nvidia's newly released RTX Pro 5500 chips, The Information reported, a move that would loosen a de facto ban that has shaped China's AI build-out for years.

According to the report, Chinese officials recently asked the companies to submit their planned purchases of the RTX Pro 5500 so regulators can gauge demand. The report said it remains unclear when — or whether — approvals would be granted, whether purchases would be capped, and how the plan squares with U.S. export controls. The Information's account was picked up by CNBC and Investing.com, which noted that Wall Street had already reacted: Chinese chipmaking stocks tumbled on the news, a sign that investors see a possible return of Nvidia hardware as a competitive threat to domestic accelerator makers.

The RTX Pro 5500 is Nvidia's newest workstation-class part, which brings data-centre-class compute to a product that sits at the edge of U.S. export rules. Beijing has spent the last several years pushing domestic alternatives — Huawei's Ascend line, Cambricon and others — while restricting what local buyers may import, and Nvidia has cycled through China-specific SKUs (H20 and successors) as Washington tightened restrictions.

Any green light would be a notable reversal. In 2026 alone, U.S. regulators have drafted rules to close remote access loopholes, Taiwan has indicted current and former Nvidia staff over AI server smuggling, and Chinese firms have been reported to be building data centres at home and abroad to route around the controls. For Beijing, allowing limited purchases could ease a compute squeeze on its AI labs; for domestic chipmakers, it could be the first real test of whether they can compete on cost and availability when Western silicon is not forbidden.

Neither Nvidia, ByteDance, Alibaba nor the MIIT has publicly confirmed the plan. For now, the policy remains a signal rather than an announcement — but a signal that immediately moved Chinese semiconductor stocks.

Sources