China Weighs Allowing Purchases of New Nvidia Chips by ByteDance, Alibaba

China’s government has signaled it could allow some domestic companies to buy a new Nvidia chip built for high-end professional computers, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the country’s AI firms strain for enough computing power to run their chatbots and agents.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which oversees China’s tech sector, recently asked companies including Alibaba Group and ByteDance to report on their plans to buy Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5500 chips, released this month—specifically how many they want to buy and what they’ll use them for, the people said. The ministry has told some Chinese companies the government intends to approve the purchases, they said. Even if that happens, though, it’s unclear when the approvals would come, how many chips officials would allow and what standards they would use to decide.