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A New York Times investigation, covered by The Verge on November 7 and Tom's Hardware on November 8, found that at least two Chinese companies approved to buy Nvidia H200 AI chips have empty offices and ties to US-blacklisted firms. The findings have prompted concerns that export license vetting is too lax.
Key facts
- The two firms are New Matrix and Maginfra. Their listed offices were reportedly empty shells, and people nearby said they had never heard of them.
- The Verge reports New Matrix was created 17 months ago and is absent from the building directory at its listed address.
- Around two dozen Chinese firms have received approval to buy H200 chips, per the Times as relayed by Tom's Hardware.
- Approved firms include Baidu, BYD, Tesla Shanghai, ZTE, Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance.
- New Matrix and Maginfra are not named as end users. They are meant to assemble the chips into AI servers for a final customer, whose identity is unclear.
What the investigation found
According to Tom's Hardware, public records show New Matrix was founded by Li Bin. He and two other main owners are connected to Wise Road, a private equity firm the US sanctioned for helping Beijing acquire sensitive chip technology. The Verge says that firm has been blacklisted since 2024. Tom's Hardware adds that Li chairs Tsinghua Unigroup and owns New H3C Semiconductor Technologies, which is on the Commerce Department's Entity List.
Maginfra is suspected of being linked to Inspur, which Washington has blacklisted since 2023 for supporting the People's Liberation Army. Tom's Hardware says the two companies share personnel, patents and a similar government ownership structure.
A third licensee, Zhejiang Yindun Cloud Technology, also drew scrutiny. Its executives are reportedly related to the founder of Range Intelligent Computing Technology Group, a data center operator that has sold compute capacity to Chinese military contractors. Yindun reportedly operates partly out of a Range data center.
Why it matters
The core issue is whether licensing conditions can be enforced when buyers are hard to locate or trace. Liza Tobin, a former China director at the White House National Security Council, told the Times she doubts that either the Commerce Department or Nvidia is doing sufficient due diligence. Tom's Hardware frames the concern as the department rubber-stamping applications. The Verge describes a pattern rather than an isolated lapse.
Because the shell-like firms act as server assemblers, the chips could pass through an intermediary before reaching an unknown end user. That is the gap critics point to.
Background and a discrepancy
The sources differ on the policy history. Tom's Hardware says President Donald Trump banned H200-class exports in April 2025, then reversed course late last year in exchange for a 25% cut of sales. It says first shipments took more than eight months to reach China because Beijing initially withheld approval for its companies to buy. The Verge instead says the Biden administration restricted sales and the Trump administration relaxed the limits after Nvidia agreed to a 15-percent cut. The two outlets give different percentages, and neither figure is confirmed here.
What to watch
- Whether the Commerce Department or Nvidia responds or reviews the approved licenses.
- Whether any licenses are revoked or the licensing terms tightened.
- Whether the final customers of New Matrix and Maginfra are identified.
The Verge also notes that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has lobbied intensively on the issue, and that it was apparently targeted by China's Ministry of State Security in a spying plot.
