The U.S. government’s effort to reopen Nvidia China chip sales is drawing questions about how carefully buyers are screened. A New York Times investigation found that at least one company cleared to receive Nvidia’s H200 AI chips appears to have no real operations, and that its ownership is linked to a Chinese private equity firm the U.S. blacklisted in 2024.
The company, New Matrix, was formed 17 months ago but has left little trace. Its listed office is described as an empty gray space with exposed wiring where lighting should be. The building directory does not name the firm, and staff at the industrial park’s property management office said they had no record of it. Online information about New Matrix is similarly sparse.
A pattern of weak vetting
The report does not treat New Matrix as an isolated case. It describes a broader pattern in which firms connected to entities facing national-security-related trade restrictions have been approved to purchase Nvidia’s AI chips. That raises concerns that neither the Commerce Department nor Nvidia is conducting thorough due diligence on the Chinese companies receiving the hardware.
The stakes are significant because the H200 is a high-end AI processor, and the approved-buyer list is meant to keep such technology out of the hands of entities that could threaten U.S. national security. When a shell-like company with opaque ownership can pass screening, the controls lose much of their purpose.
How the sales resumed
Nvidia had been barred from selling chips to China during the Biden presidency. The Trump administration loosened those restrictions after Nvidia agreed to give the government a 15 percent cut of all sales. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also mounted an intense lobbying campaign. The article further notes that Huang was apparently targeted by China’s Ministry of State Security in a spying plot.
The combination of a revenue-sharing arrangement and aggressive lobbying helps explain why the approvals moved forward. But the New Matrix findings suggest the process may have prioritized reopening sales over verifying who ultimately benefits from them.
What the empty office reveals
New Matrix’s listed address offers few signs of a functioning business. The absence of a directory entry and the property manager’s lack of records are the kinds of red flags that a basic site check could uncover. The firm’s ownership ties to a blacklisted private equity company add another layer of concern.
For critics of the relaxed export policy, the case is evidence that the safeguards are not working as intended. For Nvidia and the Commerce Department, it is a test of whether they can demonstrate that approved buyers are legitimate and that the conditions attached to the sales are being enforced.
The report does not provide evidence that New Matrix has actually received H200 chips, nor does it detail what the company intends to do with them. But its presence on the approved list is enough to raise questions about how many other names on that list would fail similar scrutiny.
