Nvidia chip buyer listed at an empty office in China

At the listed address, the building directory did not name New Matrix. A receptionist and a manager at a nearby property management agency for the industrial park told the Times they had no record of the company. The newspaper described the office as “a hollow gray shell with wires dangling from the ceiling where lights should be.”

The limited information available about New Matrix also drew scrutiny: its owners have ties to a Chinese private equity firm that the US government has blacklisted since 2024. The Times reported that the case fits a broader pattern of companies linked to entities facing national-security-related trade restrictions being approved to buy Nvidia chips.

Nvidia was barred from selling chips to China during the Biden presidency. The Trump administration later eased the limits after the company agreed to give the government 15 percent of all sales. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also mounted an intense lobbying campaign and was apparently targeted by China’s Ministry of State Security in a spying plot.