NVIDIA H200 China Licenses Reportedly Went to Two Firms With Empty Offices

The New York Times reported on Nov. 7 that the US Commerce Department has approved roughly two dozen Chinese companies to buy or handle NVIDIA H200 chips, including two assemblers, New Matrix and Maginfra, whose registered offices appeared empty.

Tom's Hardware, summarizing the Times investigation, said people working near both addresses had never heard of the companies or seen anyone use the space. New Matrix was created only 17 months ago and little information about it can be found online, eTeknix reported, adding that the building it lists as its address does not include it in the directory.

Neither firm is listed as an end user. Both are licensed to assemble H200 chips into AI servers that go on to a final customer, and it is not clear who those customers are. The list of approved firms also includes Baidu, BYD, Tesla Shanghai, ZTE, Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance.

Entity List Ties Behind New Matrix and Maginfra

Chinese corporate records tie New Matrix's owners to Wise Road, a private equity firm the US placed on its Entity List in 2024 for helping Beijing acquire sensitive chip technology. Tom's Hardware said the company was founded by Li Bin, who chairs Tsinghua Unigroup and owns New H3C Semiconductor Technologies, which is also on the Entity List. Maginfra is suspected of links to Inspur, blacklisted since 2023, with shared personnel, patents and a similar state ownership structure. A third licensee, Zhejiang Yindun Cloud Technology, is reportedly linked to the founder of Range Intelligent Computing, a data-center operator that has sold capacity to military contractors.

The Times did not establish that any chips reached the Chinese military. Liza Tobin, a former China director at the White House National Security Council, told the paper she had "a ton of concerns" that neither Commerce nor NVIDIA was doing the due diligence needed to enforce the licence terms.

What It Means for H200 Supply and Capacity

Assemblers are the point where bare accelerators become racks, so they decide where H200 capacity ends up. If licensed assemblers cannot be located or verified, the only control on that capacity is the end-user paperwork. The scale is small for now: eTeknix reported that H200 shipments to China were under 1% of NVIDIA's data-center revenue in the quarter ended July, a figure attributed to NVIDIA. A licence review or revocation would therefore matter more as a test of the revenue-share arrangement, under which Washington takes a cut of sales (Tom's Hardware gave 25%; other reports cite 15%), than as a revenue event.

Voltgrid reported separately on NVIDIA chief executive Jensen Huang's comments about a Megaspeed executive, a different case of China-linked chip access.

What Is Still Unconfirmed on the Two Firms

A Bureau of Industry and Security spokesman said every application is carefully reviewed for national security risks, according to coverage of the report. NVIDIA spokesman John Rizzo said it makes no sense for the Chinese military to depend on American technology. Neither response addresses New Matrix or Maginfra individually. As of Nov. 8, a search found no announcement of a licence review, revocation or congressional action on these two firms, and no confirmation that any H200 shipment reached either company.