By Omor Ibne Ehsan
Publication Date: 2026-10-21 13:45:00
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…
