US cleared an empty office in China to buy Nvidia's H200 AI chips

A Chinese company approved by the US government to handle Nvidia’s H200 AI chips appears to exist mostly on paper. The New York Times reports that the firm, New Matrix, lists an office that is “a hollow gray shell with wires dangling from the ceiling where lights should be,” according to a summary of the investigation published by The Verge on November 7. The finding adds to concerns that neither the Commerce Department nor Nvidia is doing proper due diligence on the Chinese firms cleared for these chips.

New Matrix is not presented as a one-off. According to the Times, it fits a troubling pattern: companies with links to entities under US national-security trade restrictions are being approved to buy Nvidia chips.

What the Times found at New Matrix’s listed office

The Times could find little evidence that New Matrix operates in any meaningful way, The Verge reports. The paper found these points:

• Only scant information about New Matrix is available online. The company was created 17 months ago.
• The company directory at the building New Matrix gives as its address does not include the firm.
• At the nearby property management agency for the industrial park, a receptionist and a manager both said they had no record of the company.
• New Matrix’s owners have ties to a Chinese private equity firm that the US government has blacklisted since 2024.

The Verge’s headline says the US “let Nvidia sell chips to an empty office in China.” Its summary states that New Matrix is on the list of approved firms. The available text does not say whether any H200 chips were shipped to New Matrix. It also does not name the blacklisted private equity firm or explain how New Matrix got onto the list. The Verge’s summary includes no response from Nvidia or the Commerce Department.

How H200 sales to China were reopened

The H200 was Nvidia’s top AI accelerator before its current Blackwell architecture. Silicon UK reported in January that Blackwell was due to be replaced by the Vera Rubin range later in 2026. Stocktwits reported that the H200 is roughly 18 months behind Nvidia’s top-tier products.

Nvidia was restricted from selling chips to China during the Biden presidency. The Trump administration relaxed those limits after Nvidia agreed to give the US government a 15 percent cut of all sales, The Verge reports. The policy changed in several steps:

When	What happened
December 2025	Trump announced on social media that Nvidia would be allowed to export H200 chips to China “on the premise of ensuring national security”. He said sales would go to “approved customers” in China and other countries, provided certain conditions were met.
December 2025	Trump said Blackwell and Rubin chips were left out of the deal.
January 2026	The Commerce Department changed H200 export licences to China from “presumption of denial” to “case-by-case review”.
January 2026	Chinese officials reportedly asked some tech companies to temporarily halt plans to buy H200 chips.
May 2026	Reuters reported that Commerce had approved about 10 Chinese companies, with a cap of up to 75,000 chips per buyer.
November 2026	The New York Times reported that approved buyer New Matrix had an empty office and owners tied to a blacklisted firm.

The “case-by-case review” wording in January matters here. It means each licence is meant to be judged on its own merits. That is exactly the step the Times reporting now questions.

Who was approved before, and on what terms

In May, reports citing Reuters said the Commerce Department had approved H200 purchases for several Chinese companies, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com. Distributors including Lenovo and Foxconn were also cleared to sell the chips in China. Approved customers could reportedly buy directly from Nvidia or through the authorised distributors. Under the licence terms, each approved buyer could buy up to 75,000 H200 chips.

Lenovo confirmed its role to Reuters. It said it “is one of several companies approved to sell H200 in China as part of Nvidia’s export license”. The Commerce Department declined to comment at the time. Nvidia, Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, JD.com and Foxconn did not respond to requests for comment.

Those May reports described large, well-known buyers and a few major distributors. The Times investigation suggests the approved list also includes much less visible entities. The sources do not show how many such firms there are.

Demand from China has been uncertain all along

The approvals have not translated into a steady flow of chips. In May, three people familiar with the matter said actual H200 deliveries to China were still at zero. Chinese buyers were waiting because of regulatory guidance from Beijing. One source said Chinese companies had grown cautious after instructions from Beijing. Another said pressure was building there to block the purchases or put them under strict review.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick described the same obstacle at a Senate hearing. He said “the Chinese central government has not let them, as of yet, buy the chips, because they’re trying to keep their investment focused on their own domestic industry”. In January, The Information reported that Chinese officials had asked some companies to halt H200 orders. Silicon UK, citing that report, said Beijing was expected to require companies to buy domestic AI chips.

White House AI adviser David Sacks raised the same issue in December 2025. “They’re rejecting our chips,” he said, citing news articles. “Apparently they don’t want them, and I think the reason for that is they want semiconductor independence”. He described the administration’s thinking this way: “selling not the best but lagging chips to China, is that you can take market share away from Huawei”.

The sources do not say whether deliveries began between May and November. This leaves an open question about the empty-office finding. It may show only a flaw in the approval process, or chips may actually have moved through firms like New Matrix. The sources available here do not answer that.

Why buyer vetting is now the central question

Export controls depend on knowing who the end buyer is. The Verge’s framing is that the government is approving sales of Nvidia’s AI chips to Chinese firms with ties to blacklisted companies. The Times calls this a pattern rather than a rare lapse in oversight. If that holds, the problem is the screening process itself, not a single bad application.

National-security concerns about H200 exports were raised from the start. In December 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that seven Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren, sent Lutnick a letter criticising the decision to clear H200 chips for China. They warned the chips could boost China’s military and technological capabilities.

Nvidia has argued strongly against restrictions. A company spokesperson told Bloomberg that Nvidia continues to work with the administration on H200 licences. The spokesperson said three years of export controls “fueled America’s foreign competitors and cost US taxpayers billions of dollars”. The Verge notes that CEO Jensen Huang ran an intense lobbying campaign. It adds that he was apparently targeted by China’s Ministry of State Security in a spying plot.

Responsibility is split. The Commerce Department oversees export controls. Nvidia sells either directly or through authorised distributors. The concern the Times raises covers both: whether the government screens applicants properly, and whether Nvidia checks the customers it sells to. The sources do not describe what checks either party actually performs.

What it means for builders

Most developers never buy accelerators directly. Still, the H200 story affects the compute market they depend on, in three ways.

• Policy can change quickly. H200 rules for China have moved from presumption of denial to case-by-case review in about a year. Each step brought new political pressure, from senators and now from press investigations. Evidence of weak vetting is the kind of finding that tends to lead to tighter rules. Teams that plan around hardware in or near China should expect these rules to keep changing.
• The rules are not the only obstacle. Even with US approval, Beijing’s guidance held deliveries at zero for months. Chinese firms are increasingly using domestic chips, especially Huawei’s, and DeepSeek has publicly highlighted its use of domestic chips. Builders following Chinese AI labs should not assume their models run on Nvidia hardware.
• Know-your-customer pressure tends to spread. The questions being asked about chip buyers involve shell companies, hidden ownership and blacklisted backers. Companies that resell or rent computing power face similar questions. These sources describe no new rules, but the political focus is clearly on who ends up holding the hardware.

Open questions and what to watch

The sources leave several things unconfirmed.

1. Official responses. The Verge’s summary includes no statement from Nvidia or the Commerce Department about New Matrix. In May, Commerce declined to comment on the approval list.
2. Whether chips were delivered. The reporting says New Matrix is approved. It does not show that the firm received hardware.
3. The size of the pattern. The Times describes multiple approved companies with links to restricted entities. The available summary does not say how many.
4. Political follow-up. Democratic senators had already pressed Lutnick before the policy took effect. New evidence about vetting gives critics in Congress specific cases to point to.
5. Beijing’s position. China has pushed companies toward domestic chips, and that limits how much the US approvals matter in practice.

The next things to watch are any official answer from Commerce or Nvidia on how New Matrix was approved, and any review or revocation of licences. Watch also for further reporting on how many approved buyers have ties to restricted entities.