Two Chinese companies cleared to buy banned Nvidia AI chips have empty offices and unknown addresses

What happened

The offices for New Matrix and Maginfra, both approved to receive H200 chips, appear abandoned, and people in the buildings say they're unfamiliar with the companies or have never seen anyone working there. An investigation has found that addresses for two Chinese companies approved to purchase Nvidia H200 chips led to empty offices, and the receptionists at the buildings were unfamiliar with them. NVIDIA is a semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, and its products and services include graphics processing units.

This news has revealed concerns that the U.S. According to The New York Times , these companies didn’t just have empty offices; their executives are often linked to other firms sanctioned by the United States for working with and providing advanced technology to the Chinese military.

Department of Commerce is simply rubber-stamping GPU (a chip built for many calculations at once, used for graphics and AI) export license applications instead of scrutinizing each one for potential links to Beijing. Many of these approved companies include well-known entities like Baidu, BYD, Tesla Shanghai, as well as ZTE , which has previously been blacklisted from the U.S.