The US let Nvidia sell chips to an empty office in China
The US approved Nvidia chip sales to a Chinese firm with an empty office and ties to a blacklisted company.Summary
The Verge reports concerns that the Commerce Department and Nvidia failed to properly vet Chinese firms approved to buy Nvidia's H200 AI chips. According to The New York Times, approved firm New Matrix lists an address where its office is an empty shell with dangling wires, and it appears in no building directory; nearby property managers had no record of it. The company was created 17 months ago and has scant online presence, and its owners have ties to a Chinese private equity firm blacklisted by the US since 2024. The Times describes this not as an isolated lapse but a pattern of companies connected to entities under national-security-related trade restrictions being cleared to purchase Nvidia chips. Nvidia sales to China were restricted under the Biden administration, but the Trump administration relaxed limits after Nvidia agreed to give the government a 15-percent cut of all sales, alongside lobbying by CEO Jensen Huang.
(Source：The Verge)