The US Commerce Department approved a company in China to handle Nvidia’s H200 AI chips even though the firm’s listed Beijing office was empty, according to a New York Times investigation published Saturday. New Matrix had been created about 17 months earlier, and reporters who visited its registered address found a vacant room with wires hanging from the ceiling where lights should have been.

The Times described the space as “a hollow gray shell with wires dangling from the ceiling where lights should be.” Its building directory did not list New Matrix, and staff at the property management office said they had no record of the company.

New Matrix is one of roughly two dozen Chinese firms the Commerce Department cleared to buy or handle Nvidia H200 chips, the Times reported. The approvals sit inside a licensing program the Trump administration opened in December 2025, when it reversed earlier restrictions on selling the powerful AI processors to China.

Nobody has shown that a single chip reached New Matrix.

What the Times found in the Nvidia H200 China approvals

The investigation, published November 7, looked at the roughly two dozen firms on the Commerce Department’s approved list and found that several have ownership links to companies under US national security restrictions. The wider list also includes bigger names such as Baidu, BYD and Tesla’s Shanghai operation, the Times reported.

That mix is what makes the findings awkward for Washington. The program was sold as a controlled opening: vetted customers only, with the chips routed through the United States for inspection before they reached China. The Times’ reporting suggests the vetting let through at least two firms that a basic address check would have flagged.

New Matrix: approved to build servers, nowhere to be found

New Matrix was cleared to assemble H200 chips into AI servers, a role that puts a company in direct contact with some of the most tightly controlled AI hardware on the market. Its registered address sits in an industrial park on the northwest edge of Beijing. Reporters who went there found an empty building.

Chinese corporate records show the firm’s owners have connections to Wise Road Capital, a private equity fund the Commerce Department placed on its trade blacklist in 2024 for allegedly helping Beijing acquire sensitive semiconductor companies. The Times did not say New Matrix itself is blacklisted. The point is narrower, and harder to wave away: a firm tied to a blacklisted fund passed the screening that was supposed to catch exactly that.

It was created about 17 months before the investigation. That is a short history for a business cleared to touch hardware Washington spent years keeping out of China.

Maginfra and the Inspur connection

Maginfra, another firm on the approved list, had a similarly thin footprint. Times reporters visited its listed office in September 2026 and found a small locked room with a few chairs and empty desks. Analysts cited by the Times linked Maginfra to Inspur, a server maker sanctioned for supplying technology to the Chinese military, pointing to shared staff and patents.

The Times doesn’t claim either company received H200 chips, and it doesn’t say the firms broke the law. Approvals to assemble or handle chips are not the same as deliveries. But the distinction cuts both ways: if the screening cannot tell a real operator from an empty room, nobody outside the program can tell where the chips would end up either.

How the H200 sales got approved

President Donald Trump announced on December 8, 2025, that Nvidia could ship H200 processors to approved customers in China, with the US government taking a 25 percent cut of the revenue. Chips made in Taiwan were to pass through the United States for inspection by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security before heading to China. The same approach was set to apply to AMD and Intel.

The Bureau of Industry and Security followed up on January 13, 2026, with a revised licensing policy that allows case-by-case approvals for Chinese buyers. Under it, buyers must screen their customers and follow procedures for complying with export restrictions. It took effect two days later, when it was published in the Federal Register.

Not everyone in Congress was comfortable. In December, a bipartisan group of senators proposed blocking any further easing of advanced AI chip export rules for two and a half years. The proposal did not become law, and the licensing program went ahead.

For Nvidia, the China business at stake is small for now. The company has told investors that H200 shipments to China-based customers were less than 1 percent of its data center revenue in the quarter that ended in July, and its forecast for the current quarter assumes no data center sales to China at all.

Why this matters

Export controls only work if the gatekeeper knows who is walking through the gate. The H200 program was built on the idea that Washington could pick trustworthy buyers one by one, charge a fee for the privilege, and inspect the hardware on the way out. The Times investigation tests that idea against two addresses and finds it wanting.

Timing matters, too. Democrats won control of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections and take the majority in January, which puts the administration’s chip-export decisions in front of a new set of overseers. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, has spent the year arguing that selling to China keeps American chipmakers ahead of rivals such as Huawei. That argument is easier to make when the buyers look real.

For now, the Commerce Department has not publicly revoked the approvals or confirmed it is reviewing them. Until it does, the question the Times raised stays open: how did a company with an empty office and ties to a blacklisted fund end up on the list of firms trusted with America’s most advanced AI chips?

Frequently asked questions

What did the New York Times find about Nvidia H200 sales to China?

The Times found the Commerce Department cleared about two dozen Chinese firms to buy or handle Nvidia H200 chips, including New Matrix, a 17-month-old company whose listed Beijing office was empty and whose owners have ties to a blacklisted private equity fund.

Did New Matrix actually receive any Nvidia H200 chips?

There is no evidence it did. The reporting says New Matrix was approved to assemble H200 chips into servers, but it does not establish that a single chip was delivered to the firm.

Why are Nvidia H200 sales to China restricted?

The H200 is a powerful AI accelerator, and Washington restricted its sale over concerns the chips could strengthen China’s military. The Trump administration opened sales to approved customers in December 2025, with a 25 percent revenue cut and US inspection of the chips.

What happens next for the H200 approvals?

The Commerce Department has not publicly revoked the approvals or confirmed a review. Democrats won control of Congress in the midterm elections and take over oversight in January, which puts the vetting process under fresh scrutiny.

Sources: The New York Times, The Verge, The Jerusalem Post, Seoul Economic Daily.