New Matrix, cleared to build Nvidia H200 servers, works from an empty building

New Matrix, the Chinese company the Trump administration cleared earlier this year to assemble Nvidia's H200 chips into AI computers, appears to work out of thin air. According to The New York Times, the Beijing address the firm lists is an empty building in a recently built industrial park on the city's northwest edge — a hollow gray shell with wires dangling where lights should be. The report raises an obvious question: who, exactly, is putting these servers together?

The H200 only became legally sellable to Chinese buyers after President Trump opened the door on December 8, 2025, with a 25% cut of the revenue routed back to the US. Washington then tightened the screws administratively, shifting to case-by-case license reviews at the Commerce Department starting in mid-January 2026. In theory, every approval involves checking who's buying and what they intend to do with the hardware.

Beijing has been just as selective from its side. In January 2026, Chinese authorities conditionally signed off on roughly 400,000 H200 chips for buyers including Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent, but big-volume import requests have reportedly kept hitting walls since. As of early November 2026, an estimated 600,000 H200 chips are said to be stacked up in Hong Kong, waiting on import approvals that never arrived at scale.

For Nvidia, the money at stake right now is small. H200 sales in China made up less than 1% of the company's data-center revenue in the July 2026 quarter, so the bottleneck barely registers on the income statement. Meanwhile, prices for AI servers on the gray market have reportedly been creeping higher.

The December 2025 pivot was a genuine policy turn — a licensed, revenue-sharing model with hand-picked Chinese firms instead of a blanket ban on advanced Nvidia silicon reaching China. Beijing, though, keeps pushing its own agenda, with growing emphasis on homegrown semiconductor capacity. That leaves the two governments pulling in opposite directions over the same chips.

Three things to watch from here: whether US officials respond to the Times report or reopen New Matrix's approval, whether Beijing lets Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent import H200s in serious volume, and whether Nvidia's next earnings show any pulse in China data-center sales. That Hong Kong stockpile is the tell — loosen the approvals, and 600,000 chips could turn into revenue fast.