Chinese technology companies have bought more than 1 million Nvidia gaming and workstation GPUs in a single year to cover a shortfall in AI compute, the Financial Times reports. The purchases, disclosed through industry insiders cited by the newspaper, underline China's continued dependence on U.S. silicon even as domestic AI chip output doubles this year.

The scale of the gap is stark. The FT report puts domestic AI chip production at roughly 3.5 million units this year, against demand that "far exceeds" 5 million — a shortfall approaching 1.5 million chips. Chinese buyers are closing it with Nvidia processors that comply with U.S. export controls but were designed for gaming and professional graphics, not data center AI.

Which chips are Chinese companies buying?

The report identifies the parts as "mostly" three product families:

• Nvidia RTX Pro 6000D
• Nvidia RTX Pro 5000
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090

All are Blackwell-generation parts. The FT notes these chips cannot match Huawei's Ascend 910C or other Chinese flagship AI accelerators in performance, but they handle "simpler AI workloads," such as prefilling, adequately.

Software plays a decisive role in the buying. Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem remains more favorable to developers than Huawei's competing Cann stack, according to the report, and that preference drives demand as much as raw hardware capability does.

What is happening to GPU prices?

The diversion of enthusiast cards into AI duty has already distorted the retail market. The RTX 5090 carries an MSRP of $1,999, but only three third-party resellers still list it, at prices starting from $7,199 — more than three times its launch price. The card has otherwise vanished from open sale.

The pressure comes at a delicate moment for the enthusiast segment. Recent reporting says Nvidia has halted RTX 5090 production and plans to replace it with a 24GB RTX 5080 flagship, a step down from the 5090's 32GB of memory. For gamers, the signal is unwelcome: the top of the consumer GPU stack appears to be shrinking rather than advancing.

Why does demand outstrip domestic supply?

China's national AI strategy has doubled domestic AI chip production this year, according to the FT, yet output still falls well short of what the country's largest technology companies need. The report frames the million-unit Nvidia buying spree as the clearest evidence that homegrown supply — led by Huawei — cannot yet absorb the compute requirements of large Chinese AI operators.

Export controls shape which Nvidia parts reach the market. The RTX Pro 6000D, RTX Pro 5000 and RTX 5090 all comply with current U.S. restrictions, which is precisely why Chinese buyers can acquire them at scale; the highest-performing data center parts remain off limits.

What comes next?

The commercial dynamics cut in several directions. If domestic production keeps expanding while Nvidia cards remain the preferred stopgap, the split market — sanctioned compliant parts for lighter workloads, homegrown accelerators for frontier training — could persist through the coming cycle. For consumers, the immediate consequence is already visible: flagship GeForce supply is tightening, prices have decoupled from MSRP, and Nvidia's reported pivot to a 24GB flagship suggests the enthusiast tier will stay under pressure until AI demand or export rules change.