According to The Verge, citing The New York Times, concerns are growing that the US Commerce Department and Nvidia are not properly vetting the Chinese firms cleared to handle H200 chips. Times reporters found that the offices of New Matrix, created 17 months ago, are "a hollow gray shell with wires dangling from the ceiling," that the company is missing from the building's directory, and that the industrial park's property management agency has no record of it.
According to the report, New Matrix's owners have ties to a Chinese private equity firm that has been on a US government blacklist since 2024, and the Times says this is not an isolated lapse but a pattern of approvals for companies connected to entities under national-security trade restrictions.
Under the Biden administration, Nvidia was barred from selling such chips to China. The Trump administration relaxed the limits after Nvidia agreed to give the government 15% of those sales.