Chinese AI companies bought 1 million Nvidia GPUs in a single year

China plugs its compute gap with Nvidia

Citing industry insiders, the Financial Times reports that Chinese tech companies bought more than 1 million Nvidia gaming and workstation GPUs in a single year to meet their AI computing needs. The buying spree highlights a continued reliance on U.S. AI hardware.

Domestic production falls short

China's national AI strategy has doubled domestic AI chip production this year, according to the report. But output is expected to reach only about 3.5 million chips, while demand far exceeds 5 million, leaving a shortfall of nearly 1.5 million chips.

Which cards are being used?

To compensate, companies are turning to models that comply with U.S. export controls. According to the report, these are mostly Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000D, RTX Pro 5000 and RTX 5090. These Blackwell cards cannot match Huawei's Ascend 910C and other homegrown flagships, but they are useful for simpler AI workloads such as prefilling.

Prices and market impact

Demand has already pushed enthusiast card prices higher. The RTX 5090 has an MSRP of $1,999, but it can now only be found at a handful of third-party resellers for no less than $7,199 and has all but disappeared from the market. The report also notes that Nvidia has halted RTX 5090 production, to be replaced by a 24GB RTX 5080 flagship, a step down from the current 32GB model.

Software matters too

Part of the demand for Nvidia GPUs comes from CUDA, which remains more favorable than Huawei's alternative, according to the report.