Some Chinese companies approved by the US Commerce Department to buy Nvidia's H200 AI chips appear to exist mostly on paper, according to a New York Times investigation reported by Techmeme and The Verge. One approved firm, New Matrix, lists an office that The Times described as an empty gray shell with wires dangling from the ceiling, and reporters found scant evidence the company operates in any meaningful way.
The findings raise questions about how thoroughly Washington and Nvidia vet the Chinese buyers cleared to receive advanced AI hardware. The Times said the case is not an isolated lapse, but part of a pattern in which firms tied to entities under US national-security trade restrictions have been approved to purchase Nvidia chips.
What the New York Times found
New Matrix was created 17 months ago, yet The Times could find only limited information about it online. At the building it lists as its address, the company directory does not include the firm, and a receptionist and a manager at the nearby industrial park property office both said they had no record of it.
What information does exist is concerning: the owners of New Matrix have ties to a Chinese private equity firm that has been blacklisted by the US government since 2024, according to the report. The Times frames this as a broader oversight problem rather than a single bad actor, with multiple approved buyers linked to companies facing American trade restrictions.
Why Nvidia H200 sales to China resumed
Nvidia had been barred from selling chips to China during the Biden presidency, but the Trump administration relaxed those limits after Nvidia agreed to give the US government a 15-percent cut of all sales, according to The Verge. CEO Jensen Huang also ran an intense lobbying campaign, and was reportedly targeted by China's Ministry of State Security in a spying plot.
The H200 is one of Nvidia's advanced AI accelerators, and any export approval is politically sensitive because of the chip's potential military and strategic applications. The arrangement — sales allowed in exchange for a revenue share — has made the vetting of buyers a central test of the policy.
