Approved Buyers of Nvidia's H200 Chips Include a Firm With Empty Offices
New Matrix, a Chinese company, is on the list of Chinese firms approved to handle Nvidia's H200 AI chips, the New York Times reported on November 7, 2026. The Times also reported that the offices the company lists are empty.
According to the paper, the space is a hollow gray shell with wires hanging from the ceiling where lights should be. New Matrix does not appear in the company directory of the building it lists as its address, and staff at the nearby property management agency said they had no record of the company. The New York Times
Little information about the company is available online, the Times reported. New Matrix was created 17 months ago. The paper also reported that its owners have ties to a Chinese private equity firm, an investment fund, that the U.S. government has blacklisted since 2024.
The Times described New Matrix as the second Chinese company approved to handle H200 chips that does not seem to have any physical presence at its listed address.
The approvals follow a change in U.S. policy. The Trump administration relaxed limits on Nvidia chip sales to China after Nvidia agreed to give the U.S. government a 15-percent cut of all sales. The Verge
The sequence began in late 2025. In November 2025, Reuters reported that the Trump administration was considering greenlighting, or approving, sales of Nvidia's H200 artificial intelligence chips to China. Reuters, November 21, 2025 The H200 is Nvidia's second-most powerful AI chip, designed for training and running large models. Reuters, December 22, 2025 In that December report, Nvidia told Chinese clients it aims to start shipping H200 chips to China before the Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February.
The Times published its investigation, titled 'U.S. Cleared Nvidia Chips to Chinese Firms With Empty Offices and Troubling Ties,' on November 7, 2026.
The broader context here is the export licensing chain itself. A licensed chip is only as traceable as the entity that holds it. An approved name with no visible operation, no directory listing and no record with the property manager gives outside observers few independent ways to confirm who is receiving H200s. The questions that follow are concrete. Who verified New Matrix's operations before its approval, and what checks apply to the other firms on the list? Those answers will determine whether the approvals can be relied on, more than the list itself.
In my view, a regime that ties sales to a revenue share and a named set of approved buyers can work, but only if the named buyers can be located at the addresses they give. That standard is modest. The two cases the Times examined are the reason it is now being tested in public.
