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Delayed 15 min · 12:26 GMT

FLASH

China industrial profits jump 14.4% in September on AI demand South Korea Q3 GDP grows 1.0%, triple the central bank’s forecast Wall Street lines up $63B to fund Broadcom AI chips for Anthropic Brazil’s Ibovespa crashes ~14% after Lula’s surprise runoff win Central banks' super week: Fed, ECB, BoJ seen holding; Canada may hike Moody’s spares France a downgrade as 10-year yield tops 5% Oil slips from six-month highs as Qatar mediates in Tehran China’s Fifth Plenum opens as AI exports mask weak home demand Lula wins, Brazil markets brace for shock sell-off; Tokyo Brazil ETF plunges ~15% Brazil votes today: Lula faces Flávio Bolsonaro in runoff

China industrial profits jump 14.4% in September on AI demand South Korea Q3 GDP grows 1.0%, triple the central bank’s forecast Wall Street lines up $63B to fund Broadcom AI chips for Anthropic Brazil’s Ibovespa crashes ~14% after Lula’s surprise runoff win Central banks' super week: Fed, ECB, BoJ seen holding; Canada may hike Moody’s spares France a downgrade as 10-year yield tops 5% Oil slips from six-month highs as Qatar mediates in Tehran China’s Fifth Plenum opens as AI exports mask weak home demand Lula wins, Brazil markets brace for shock sell-off; Tokyo Brazil ETF plunges ~15% Brazil votes today: Lula faces Flávio Bolsonaro in runoff

Technology

China’s tech giants order $35B of Nvidia’s export-compliant chips

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent are buying up the most powerful Nvidia cards still allowed into China. It shows US export controls are redirecting China’s AI chip demand, not ending it.

News | 21 October 2026

China’s tech giants order $35B of Nvidia’s export-compliant chips

Washington banned Nvidia’s best chips from China, so China is buying the next best thing in bulk.

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have reportedly ordered more than 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards at roughly $11,400 each, worth over $35 billion in total. They want them mainly for inference, the work of running trained AI models.

The catch is supply. Total Chinese orders top 6 million units, but Nvidia may make only about 3 million in 2027, and some partners could receive just 5–10% of what they asked for. Nvidia has said it can’t guarantee delivery.

Jensen Huang has said US curbs shrank Nvidia’s share of China’s AI data-centre market to almost nothing. Read the $35 billion as pent-up demand rather than a sales figure.