Investigation Raises Questions About H200 Chip Licenses for Four Chinese Companies
Key Facts
An investigation published by The New York Times, with details reported by The Business Times, raised questions about the scrutiny of licenses for four Chinese companies linked to Nvidia’s H200 chips after finding vacant offices and commercial and personal ties that warrant verification. The investigation said New Matrix and Maginver obtained approvals to assemble the chips in AI servers for another customer, rather than to buy them as end users. The report focused on indicators involving the companies’ addresses and networks, but did not establish that they had violated the law or diverted chips to the military. These indicators matter as the United States requires checks on buyers and chips as part of the export process to China. Meanwhile, H200 shipments to customers in China accounted for less than 1% of Nvidia’s data-center revenue in the quarter ended in July.
The investigation said a reporter who visited New Matrix’s registered address found it empty, and that as of November 6 the company’s website listed no employees, job postings or information about its history. The report noted that the company’s principal owners appeared in records for companies linked to Wiz Road, which the U.S. government added to the Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2024. The owners’ appearance in those records alone does not establish that New Matrix violated its license terms. But it puts the ownership background among the information that may be scrutinized when reviewing the chip recipients. The report’s central question remains whether intermediary companies and end users are being checked sufficiently before exports are authorized.
As for Maginver, a reporter who visited its address in September found an abandoned site, with a small locked room inside containing some chairs and empty desks, according to the report. The investigation said analysts linked the company to the Inspur Group, but the available information did not provide evidence that the link had led to H200 chips being transferred to a prohibited entity. Maginver and New Matrix, according to the report, were licensed to assemble the chips in servers for another customer, making checks on the end customer a key part of the export process. The Associated Press reported that export terms bar China from importing more than 50% of the chips sold to U.S. customers and prohibit their use for military purposes. These restrictions underscore the importance of verifying the end user’s identity, alongside checks on the licensed entity’s premises and ties.
The investigation linked Zhejiang Yindun Cloud Technology to the Ring Intelligent Computing Technology Group, noting that some of Yindun’s operations are run from a data center owned by Ring. The report said some Yindun officials are relatives of Ring’s founder, and that Ring provides cloud-computing services to a satellite program run by the defense office in Hebei province. The report did not establish that Yindun or Ring had used H200 chips in the program or diverted them for military use. It also noted that Shanghai Jiatang, another company named among the licensed entities, originated from state-owned Datang Telecom. The report described Datang as a chipmaker that provides technology to the Chinese military, an institutional link cited by the investigation without establishing that the chips at the center of the story were used for military purposes.
The report said Shanghai Jiatang, Yindun Cloud and Maginver did not respond to requests for comment. On January 13, 2026, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced that export applications for H200 chips to China would move to a case-by-case review. The conditions include, according to the bureau, exporters demonstrating that capacity available to U.S. customers is not reduced, Chinese buyers adopting compliance and customer-screening procedures, and the chips undergoing independent testing in the United States. Nvidia said in a regulatory filing that Chinese restrictions had prevented it from selling all H200 products covered by U.S. licenses. The company also recorded a cost of 0.4 billion dollars related to excess inventory and purchase commitments for H200 chips in the first half of its fiscal 2027.
Nvidia had said H200 shipments under the licensing program accounted for less than 1% of data-center revenue in the latest quarter it reported, and that the licenses require chip inspections in the United States before shipment. In May 2026, Reuters reported that the United States had approved about 10 Chinese companies to buy H200 chips, but said at the time that no shipments had been delivered. By July 14, a U.S. trade official told Congress that exports to China remained very limited, and Reuters named Maginver among the approved buyers. In November, Reuters reported that about 600,000 of Nvidia’s AI chips were stored in Hong Kong pending Beijing’s approval to import them into mainland China. The agency said major Chinese internet companies had each received about 10,000 H200 chips in previous months, while a server with 8 H200 cards was offered for more than 6 million yuan on the mainland at the end of October, about three times its price a year earlier. China’s National Bureau of Statistics is scheduled to release its monthly consumer price index report on November 9 at 9:30 a.m. China time, according to the bureau’s schedule.