An approved buyer of Nvidia AI chips in China turned out to be an empty office

One of the Chinese companies the US cleared to handle Nvidia's H200 AI chips appears to barely exist. The New York Times visited the listed office of New Matrix and found a gutted gray shell with wires hanging where the lights should be, Terrence O'Brien reports for The Verge.

What the Times found

New Matrix was set up 17 months ago and has almost no online footprint. The building it lists as its address doesn't include it in the tenant directory, and staff at the nearby property management office said they had no record of it. The people who own it are linked to a Chinese private equity firm that has been on a US blacklist since 2024.

According to the Times, this isn't a one-off. Companies connected to entities under national-security trade restrictions are, in a recurring pattern, getting approved to buy Nvidia chips. The criticism is aimed at both the Commerce Department and Nvidia for weak vetting.

How we got here

Nvidia was barred from selling these chips to China under President Biden. The Trump administration loosened those rules once Nvidia agreed to hand Washington 15% of the sales, though the most powerful chips are still off-limits and Commerce must approve each buyer. Jensen Huang lobbied hard for the change, and, as reported this week, was himself the target of a Chinese spying effort.

Why it matters

Export controls only work if someone checks who's on the other end. An approval process that can clear an empty room isn't a control, it's paperwork. And the chips are the strategic asset in the AI race, which is why both administrations restricted them in the first place.

For anyone in compliance or supply chain work, it's a familiar lesson in a very expensive setting: know-your-customer means visiting the customer, not reading the form.

Scoreboard update: Draw. AI chips meant to be tightly controlled get cleared for a company that isn't there.

Stay undead.