NYT: U.S. Cleared Nvidia H200s for Chinese Firms With Empty Offices and Ties to Blacklisted Companies

The H200 export bargain only works if Washington knows who is on the other end of each license. The New York Times went and looked, and at two approved Chinese companies it found no one there.

In a report published on November 7, the Times says the Commerce Department approved New Matrix, a Chinese firm created 17 months ago, to assemble Nvidia's H200 chips into AI servers. The company's listed address, in an industrial park on the northwest edge of Beijing, is "a hollow gray shell with wires dangling from the ceiling where lights should be," the Times reports. A building directory did not list the firm, and staff at the park's property management office said they had no record of it.

What the Times found#

According to Chinese corporate records cited by the Times, two of New Matrix's primary owners appear in the records of companies connected to Wise Road, a Chinese private equity firm that Commerce added to its entity list in 2024, and to its founder, Li Bin. Two analysts told the paper they believe New Matrix may be a front for firms associated with that fund. New Matrix did not respond to the Times.

The Times says New Matrix is the second approved H200 handler with no visible presence at its listed address. In September it reported that Maginfra, which analysts link to the entity-listed server maker Inspur, had an apparently unused office. Other approved companies, the paper reports, have ownership ties to Chinese military suppliers, including Zhejiang Yindun Cloud Technology and Shanghai Jiatang.

People familiar with the approvals told the Times that roughly two dozen Chinese firms have been cleared to buy or handle H200s, including Baidu, BYD and Tesla Shanghai, each approved for tens of thousands of chips but not yet at that quota.

What Commerce and Nvidia say#

A spokesman for the Bureau of Industry and Security told the Times it carefully reviews all applications for national security risks, and said it imposed $324 million in export-violation penalties in 2025 and hired more than 90 enforcement officers this year. Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo said "it makes no sense for the Chinese military to depend on American technology," and that China has strictly limited H200 imports in favour of domestic chips.

That last point matches what Reuters reported this week: about 600,000 H200s are sitting in Hong Kong because Beijing has not approved large imports. The Times says H200 shipments to China-based customers were under 1% of Nvidia's data-centre revenue in the quarter that ended in July. The licensing questions also land as Congress presses Nvidia over the Megaspeed executive U.S. officials link to Chinese intelligence.

Limits#

• These are the Times's findings from site visits, corporate records and unnamed people; Commerce has not said any license was wrongly granted, and no company named here has been charged in the material we read.
• The front-company reading of New Matrix comes from two analysts quoted by the Times, not from a government finding.
• We read the Times report through syndication; nytimes.com did not load for us. The Verge's write-up summarises the same report and is not an independent check.
• The Verge describes the government's share of H200 sales as 15%; the Times text we read describes a 25% tariff. We use the Times figure and flag the mismatch.

Sources#

• The New York Times (via DNYUZ syndication): U.S. Cleared Nvidia Chips to Chinese Firms With Empty Offices and Troubling Ties (November 7, 2026)
• The Verge: The US let Nvidia sell chips to an empty office in China (November 7, 2026)
• Reuters via Investing.com: Exclusive-Nvidia chips pile up in Hong Kong as China withholds import approval (November 5, 2026)
• House Foreign Affairs Committee: Chairmen Mast, Moolenaar, and Crawford Request Jensen Huang Brief Congress (November 5, 2026)