The US Cleared a Chip Buyer Whose Office Was Empty

The Commerce Department's licensing rule for Nvidia's H200 chip took effect January 14, 2026, moving China sales from a presumption of denial to case by case review. The conditions attached to each license required Nvidia to confirm adequate US supply first, a third party know your customer check on the buyer, and a ban on military end use. Those three conditions are the obligations the rule created. The question now is whether anyone checked that licensees met them.

The New York Times reported on November 7, 2026, that a Beijing firm called New Matrix, cleared under the program to assemble H200 chips into AI servers, lists an address in an industrial park that a Times reporter visited and found vacant. The paper described it as "a hollow gray shell with wires hanging where lights should be." The Times also reported that New Matrix's owners have ties to a fund already on a US restricted list, a connection the licensing review apparently didn't catch.

New Matrix is the second case the Times has found. In September 2026 a reporter visited another licensed assembler, Maginfra, and found a small locked room with a few chairs and empty desks. People familiar with the approvals told the paper roughly two dozen Chinese firms hold licenses under this track. At least two of them have no apparent physical presence.

The Bureau of Industry and Security says it "carefully reviews all applications" and weighs national security risk before issuing a license. BIS hasn't detailed what diligence, site visits or ownership tracing, it performed on New Matrix or Maginfra specifically, and the Times didn't establish who controls the New Matrix address now. Nvidia's own obligation under the January rule was to confirm supply and support the third party vetting, not to police end use after a license issues. Reuters reported in February 2026 that Nvidia hadn't actually agreed to the know your customer terms Commerce proposed, a gap that left unclear which party owns post approval verification.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that month that Nvidia "must live with" the guardrails regardless. Meanwhile China's own Cyberspace Administration has told major buyers like Alibaba and ByteDance to hold off on H200 purchases since September 2025. Reuters reported on November 5, 2026, that roughly 600,000 H200 chips are sitting in a Hong Kong warehouse, cleared by Washington, waiting on an import approval Beijing hasn't given.