NYT: U.S.-Cleared Nvidia H200 Firms in China Have Empty Offices

New Matrix, a 17-month-old Beijing company the Trump administration cleared to assemble Nvidia's H200 chips into AI servers, operates out of what The New York Times describes as "an empty building" on the northwest edge of Beijing, "a hollow gray structure with wires hanging from the ceiling where light fixtures should be." It is the second such licensee the paper has found. A company called Maginfra, approved under the same program, had an equally deserted office when Times reporters visited in September.

Chinese corporate filings tie New Matrix's owners to Wise Road, a Chinese private equity fund that U.S. Commerce placed on its entity list in 2024 for allegedly helping Beijing acquire strategically sensitive semiconductor companies. Analysts cited by the Times believe Maginfra is linked to Inspur, which was itself added to the entity list over work with the Chinese military. Commerce has signed off on roughly two dozen Chinese firms to buy or handle H200s, a roster that also includes Baidu, BYD and Tesla Shanghai.

"I have a ton of concerns that neither the Commerce Department or Nvidia is doing the due diligence needed to ensure that the licensing terms are being followed," Liza Tobin, a former China director at the White House National Security Council, told the Times. Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo pushed back that "it makes no sense for the Chinese military to depend on American technology." A Bureau of Industry and Security spokesman said the office carefully reviews every application for national security risks.

The commercial stakes, for Nvidia today, are small: H200 shipments to China were less than 1% of the company's data-center revenue in the quarter ending July. The policy stakes are not. Trump cleared the H200 track in December 2025 on condition that the U.S. government collect 25% of the revenue, and the licenses now under scrutiny are the first real test of whether that compromise can be policed. The story lands the same day we tracked Shenzhen clearing smuggled-chip stalls ahead of APEC and U.S. intelligence concluding that Megaspeed executive Alice Huang had been recruited by China's MSS to target Jensen Huang.