Nvidia’s China-only RTX6000D AI chip struggles to attract buyers: Report

Nvidia's newest artificial intelligence (AI) chip designed for the Chinese market, the RTX6000D, has received a muted response from major technology firms, according to a recent report by Reuters.

Citing people familiar with procurement discussions, the report said that the RTX6000D, developed mainly for AI inference tasks, has been criticised as costly relative to its performance. At roughly 50,000 yuan ($7,000), it is priced at more than double the grey-market RTX5090, a more powerful chip banned from sale in China under U.S. export controls but still widely available.

According to the report, Alibaba and ByteDance have refrained from placing orders as they await clarity over shipments of Nvidia's H20 chip, which was temporarily banned in April but regained approval for sale in July. The companies are also holding out for the possibility that Nvidia's more advanced B30A will be cleared by Washington.

As per the report, the tepid reception contrasts with forecasts from investment banks that expected millions of units to be shipped in the second half of the year. Nvidia began deliveries of the RTX6000D this week, but the lack of demand raises questions about the company's prospects in the Chinese market, already complicated by heightened U.S.-China trade tensions.

Beijing has urged domestic firms to adopt Chinese-made alternatives, even as Nvidia products remain highly sought after. Earlier this week, Chinese authorities accused the U.S. chipmaker of violating anti-monopoly laws, adding to the uncertainty around its operations in the country, as per the report.

The RTX6000D is built on Nvidia's Blackwell architecture with conventional GDDR memory and bandwidth of 1,398 gigabytes per second, just below the regulatory threshold. It was developed to replace the H20, which uses older Hopper technology but offers significantly higher bandwidth.