Two Chinese companies cleared by U.S. regulators to purchase restricted Nvidia H200 AI processors operate out of completely empty office spaces, according to an investigation published by Tom’s Hardware.
New Matrix and Maginfra Operate from Deserted Offices
The New York Times investigation revealed that physical addresses for New Matrix and Maginfra featured deserted rooms with minimal furniture. Receptionists at the buildings reported they had never heard of the firms or seen visitors access the spaces. Public company records show New Matrix was founded by Li Bin alongside two primary partners tied to Wise Road.
Wise Road is a private equity firm previously sanctioned by Washington for helping Beijing acquire sensitive semiconductor technology. Li chairs Tsinghua Unigroup, a state-backed tech conglomerate, and owns New H3C Semiconductor Technologies, which sits on the Commerce Department’s Entity List for military cooperation.
Maginfra shares personnel, patents, and a government ownership structure with Inspur. Washington blacklisted Inspur in 2023 for supporting the People’s Liberation Army. Neither of these newly approved entities appears as the final end user for the Nvidia hardware. Instead, they are designated to assemble the processors into AI servers before forwarding them to downstream customers. The ultimate destinations for those servers remain entirely unverified.
Another approved firm, Zhejiang Yindun Cloud Technology, maintains executive connections to the founder of Range Intelligent Computing Technology Group. That data center operator previously sold compute capacity to Chinese military contractors. Yindun reportedly operates partially out of a Range data center facility.
🚨 NVIDIA AI CHIPS, CHINESE COMPANIES, AND EMPTY OFFICES?! WHAT IS GOING ON?! 👀🔥 A New York Times investigation is raising some SERIOUS questions about how the U. S. government approves Chinese companies to handle NVIDIA’s powerful H200 AI chips! • The U. S. Commerce… pic.twitter.com/2wN8Dl3w8Z
Former White House National Security Council China director Liza Tobin criticized the oversight process. She told Tom’s Hardware, 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.
Baidu and Tesla Shanghai Receive Nvidia H200 Shipments
President Donald Trump banned the export of Nvidia AI graphics processing units in April 2025. Despite that policy shift, it still took more than eight months for the first H200 shipments to arrive in China.
Nvidia H200 Export Approvals Raise Questions Over Chinese Firms' Ties Two Chinese companies reportedly cleared to assemble servers using Nvidia H200 AI chips have raised questions about how the United States screens businesses involved in sensitive technology exports. A New… pic.twitter.com/a3Te8DLdKj
Many of these approved companies include well-known entities like Baidu, BYD, Tesla Shanghai, as well as ZTE, Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance.
Unresolved Licensing Oversight Questions
The Department of Commerce faces mounting scrutiny over whether officials are rubber-stamping export applications without investigating ties to Beijing’s military apparatus. The identities of the final recipients for the servers assembled by New Matrix and Maginfra are not publicly known. Commerce Department representatives have not clarified what investigative steps preceded the approval of these empty-office entities.
