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Chinese tech companies have purchased over 1 million Nvidia gaming and workstation GPUs in a single year to address shortages in AI computing power, according to the Financial Times. While China has doubled its domestic AI chip production this year as part of its national strategy, industry insiders report a shortfall of nearly 1.5 million chips. Domestic manufacturing is expected to produce only 3.5 million units, while demand far exceeds 5 million. To fill this gap, companies are buying Nvidia processors that comply with U.S. export controls and repurposing them for AI tasks.

The Financial Times notes that these chips are mostly the RTX Pro 6000D, RTX Pro 5000, and the RTX 5090. Although Blackwell chips cannot compete with Huawei’s Ascend 910C or other homegrown flagships, they are useful for simpler AI workloads like prefilling. This reliance adds pressure to a market where enthusiast card prices have already skyrocketed. The RTX 5090 has an MSRP of $1,999 but is now available at only three third-party resellers for no less than $7,199 and has largely disappeared from the market.

Demand for Nvidia GPUs is driven partly by its CUDA software, which remains more favorable than Huawei’s Cann alternative. Additionally, Nvidia recently halted RTX 5090 production to replace it with a 24GB RTX 5080 flagship. This marks a significant step down from the 32GB capacity of the current 5090, suggesting the enthusiast gaming GPU market may be receding rather than advancing.