r/hardware • u/constantlymat • 14h ago
News ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent place over $35 billion worth of Nvidia chip orders (more than 3 million RTX PRO 5500 workstation GPUs)
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/bytedance-alibaba-tencent-place-over-35-billion-worth-nvidia-chip-orders-2026-10-20/97
u/Livid_Mind_5609 14h ago
This is why they're reallocating GB202. Gamers are competing with 100B+ whales
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u/ILoveTheAtomicBomb 13h ago
May my 5090 hold strong and true during these trying times. Even bought a thing to watch the power wattage just to be safe lol
Hopefully a 6000 series happens and they make 90 series (even tho I know it’ll just be 10 cards probably)
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u/bubblesort33 8h ago edited 8h ago
Why even hold onto that GPU. Sell it and buy a BMW and A 5080.
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u/ILoveTheAtomicBomb 8h ago
Something I considered, but also sold my 4090 to cover my 5090 at launch and assume I’ll just do the same here and still have the same sell price
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u/DerpSenpai 11h ago
The 6000 series most likely won't be faster than the 5090, Nvidia has 0 incentives to make a 6090 right now too
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u/EloquentPinguin 11h ago
I mean if AMD puts out something there is a chance they will paper launch a product for the benchmark charts. But at this point I can't quite imagine that they put any serious volume towards consumers
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u/slickvibez 9h ago
Bro... I'm not a financial expert... But selling your 5090 right now means you could buy 10 6090s (or 7090s) when this bubble inevitably pops.
I'd buy a 5070 and just vibe with your extra cash. Hell put it in a HYSA and it'll become 15 6090s!
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u/capybooya 9h ago
We'll see, I think they'd want as many people as possible to upgrade, including current 5090 owners to a 6090, but if they can't make a faster card for quite cheap and with a small die, they might just not release it.
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u/caspissinclair 13h ago
Oh boy, I can't wait for all the perfect AI-generated products that make all previous products obsolete. I'll hold my breath.
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u/Double-Minimum-9048 13h ago
AI IS A BUBBLE 😂 So why is demand so high in China? They’re buying millions of GPUs from US companies just to compete 🤷♀️
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u/Bwint 13h ago
There's no question AI is powerful, and of course China wants to compete. The question is whether it's powerful enough to generate enough profits to justify trillion-dollar valuations for multiple companies, and so far the answer is "definitely not."
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u/Homerlncognito 13h ago
Nvidia and potentially ASIC companies are going to win even if more and more inference will switch to local. Anthropic and OpenAI don't really have a realistic path to profitability.
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u/ADIBB87 10h ago
Me thinks they want to use those to make local models better and effective; that's the only way to make a dent in ChatGPT and Claude.
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u/exmachina64 6h ago
In the long-term, OpenAI and Anthropic can’t compete with the Chinese companies. When the American AI bubble bursts, the Chinese models will fill the gap.
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u/Unnamed-3891 13h ago
If (and thats a big fucking if) somebody actually figures out true AGI, it’s likely they will take over the entire planet to the point of money literally becoming entirely meaningless. No monetary price is too high.
Very literal ”go bankrupt or rule the world”.
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u/Livid_Mind_5609 13h ago
Never say never but I doubt agi can be achieved with RTX PRO 5500. Openai has vastly more powerful gpu clusters and they're not near agi.
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 13h ago
But the current technology they are building has no reasonable way of becoming AGI.
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u/ComputeCommodity104 13h ago
And how does your GED give you the education to understand this tech accurately?
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u/Livid_Mind_5609 13h ago
you dont need a phd to understand a workstation gpu isn't going to bring you anywhere near agi
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u/ComputeCommodity104 13h ago
If you're reducing your argument to calling the best computational hardware in human history a workstation gpu for the purposes of minimizing the efficacy of the tool you've shown how much you really know about this subject as a whole.
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u/Livid_Mind_5609 13h ago
There are clusters of b200 with access to over tbs of vram and you think a gpu with 64-96gb will manage it?
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u/ComputeCommodity104 13h ago
Do you really think these aren't run in parallel? You think they're run individually? Are you purposefully being obtuse or are you really that limited in knowledge on this subject to keep replying?
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u/Livid_Mind_5609 12h ago
B200 clusters have much higher bandwidth, better architectures and higher vram pools, and still havent achieved agi.
This wont
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u/GigaVonMassiveHuge 10h ago
It’s an arms race now, feels like
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u/dparks1234 7h ago
It’s absolutely an arms race, but it’s a weird one in that it’s being fueled by post-national entities like Nvidia who intrinsically want to sell to both sides.
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u/ComputeCommodity104 13h ago
Lmao AI is not a bubble, it is the greatest productivity multiplier in human civilization.
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u/Seanspeed 13h ago
If you're a programmer maybe. For most people, no it's not. Industrialization, combustion engines and computers in general were massively, massively more important for productivity increases for humans overall. Like it's not even remotely arguable.
Hell even if you're a programmer, there's still many more advancements in the past that led to much more significant increases in productivity versus writing everything in assembly code.
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u/moofunk 1h ago
AI systems can control machines, computer programs and lift them into an intelligence domain that required an expert operator before.
I'm not sure we hear much yet outside of advanced robotics how AI systems interface with the physical world, but I think eventually we will hear more about it for practically any cheap machine than the likes of ChatGPT.
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u/Gippy_ 9h ago edited 9h ago
I have an AI subscription and I'm not a programmer. AI has become my defacto replacement for search engines because all of them (especially Google) got infested by shady SEO results. 25 years ago, there was Ask Jeeves, which got shoved aside in the 2000s as Google outperformed all other search engines. Now AI, the successor of Ask Jeeves, is out for revenge.
Regular people are also asking AI questions that would be better answered by a professional, such as legal, financial, and medical advice. It's reckless, but saving money and doing it in the comfort of their own home is all what people care about.
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u/Seanspeed 3h ago
AI isn't a 'better' replacement for Google's search becoming more annoying. It's still doing the same thing, except it gets it wrong a bunch. lol
You're just admitting you're being lazy and not actually searching.
And yes, you've well explained how AI is just taking over people from thinking for themselves and doing their own research. It's a fucking nightmare.
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u/ComputeCommodity104 13h ago
its entirely arguable thats why we're having this conversation right now on the internet. Providing computers as another answer is reasonable because without the invention of computers and the transformer we wouldnt have gotten where we are today with AI.
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u/dparks1234 7h ago
China continues to go full throttle on AI while the United States seems to have a (rather unique) anti-AI and data centre movement. I’m usually a sceptic but it does make me wonder if there’s any social engineering at play. Either that or it’s just the difference between a democratic society and an authoritarian society
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u/Double-Minimum-9048 6h ago
There money in politics in the US and AI spending is trillions like never seen before, makes sense the US enemies would want to hinder it through propaganda. China had huge restrictions on freedom of speech which a great benefit of the one china policy. This means its has more focus on future industries manufacturing, construction, rewables, EVs, Robotics and now as you said AI rather than overspending on the elderly
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u/DavidsakuKuze 13h ago
China builds empty skyscrapers bro. If the USSR were still around they'd be like "Please Comrade Jensen send GPU".
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u/reelect_brandon_john 11h ago
If the USSR were still around they'd be like "Please Comrade Jensen send GPU".
the US had cocom sanctions on the USSR so in fact they would not be begging for GPUs.
these are also paid for products. do you think western companies like ASML and nvidia are giving these away?
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u/Seanspeed 13h ago edited 13h ago
China wants these specifically because we've been trying to tie their hands behind their back in getting the good stuff(which is a good thing, we should not want China to win any AI race....).
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u/tooltalk01 4h ago
... because we've been trying to tie their hands behind their back in getting the good stuff
You mean like how China did exactly that with the rare earth since 2010, first against Japan over the Shinkaku? Or China's abrupt supply disruption EV-grade graphites against Sweden and its Swedish battery champion, Northvolt, because Sweden protected a naturalized Swede and called out China's human rights violation?
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u/Seanspeed 4h ago
I have no idea what sort of point you're trying to make here. I dont begrudge China's attempts at wanting to be the world's predominant superpower. I just know it would be fucking AWFUL if they actually win that competition.
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u/tooltalk01 3h ago
I have no idea what sort of point you're trying to make here.
China's weaponization, "tieing our hands behind back," of trade and market position is nothing new or invented by the West, as you falsely insinuate here. You are conflating cause and effect.
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u/michalwalks 5h ago
The good news is that in a few years there will be millions of 5090s on the resale market from bankrupt data centres and the AI crash
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_HAGGIS_ 14h ago
That’s the 5090’s. Jeez.