- About 24 Chinese firms, including Baidu, BYD and Tesla Shanghai, hold US approval to buy or handle Nvidia H200 chips, each for tens of thousands of units, according to people familiar with the approvals cited by the Times.
- Two approved server assemblers, New Matrix and Maginfra, had empty or deserted offices, and corporate records link them to Wise Road Capital and Inspur, both on the US Entity List.
- A Commerce rule filed November 5 keeps the 50% Affiliates Rule, which extends Entity List limits to majority-owned subsidiaries, switched off until January 10, 2027.
The US Commerce Department has cleared roughly two dozen Chinese companies to buy or handle Nvidia's H200 AI chips, and at least two of the firms licensed to assemble those chips into servers show no sign of operating at their listed addresses. The finding, from a New York Times investigation published November 7, lands two days before the Commerce Department formally extends its pause on the one rule built to catch companies owned by blacklisted parties.
Commerce licensed H200 assemblers that the Times could not find
President Trump allowed H200 sales to China in December 2025 on condition that Washington collects a 25% cut, with chips assembled in Taiwan routed through the United States so the tariff can be applied. Each buyer and intermediary still needs a Commerce Department national security review. New Matrix, a 17-month-old Beijing firm approved to build H200 servers, passed that review. Its listed Beijing office is an empty shell that the industrial park's managers had never heard of. Chinese corporate records tie two of its main owners to companies connected with Wise Road Capital, a private equity firm the US added to the Entity List in December 2024 for helping Beijing acquire sensitive chip companies.
Maginfra, a second approved assembler first reported in September, occupied a small locked room that building staff said nobody used. Analysts told the Times it appears to be an offshoot of Inspur, China's largest server maker, which shares personnel and patents with it and has been on the Entity List since 2023. Two other licensees, Zhejiang Yindun Cloud Technology and Shanghai Jiatang, trace through their owners to suppliers of the Chinese military. The Bureau of Industry and Security said it reviews every application for national security risk and cited $324 million in 2025 export penalties.
| Licensed firm | Approved role | Reported link |
|---|---|---|
| New Matrix | Server assembler | Owners tied to Wise Road Capital (Entity List, 2024) |
| Maginfra | Server assembler | Shares staff and patents with Inspur (Entity List, 2023) |
| Zhejiang Yindun Cloud | Buyer | Run partly from a data center of military cloud supplier Range |
| Shanghai Jiatang | Buyer | Grew out of state chipmaker Datang Telecom |
Source: New York Times, November 7, 2026; BIS Entity List records.
The ownership rule that targets these links stays paused until 2027
BIS adopted its Affiliates Rule in September 2025 so that any company at least 50% owned by Entity List parties would inherit the same restrictions automatically. It suspended the rule for one year from November 10, 2025, and the pause was due to lapse on November 10, 2026. A final rule signed by Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler and filed on November 5 pushes that date back.
“This final rule extends the suspension through January 10, 2027.”
Bureau of Industry and Security, Federal Register document 2026-22793
The records reviewed so far show ties through owners and executives, and none establishes a 50% stake held by a listed company, so the rule might not have blocked these licences on its own. It is still the only Commerce tool that screens ownership chains automatically, and the licences were issued without it. Nvidia's own filings put China H200 sales below 1% of data-center revenue in the quarter to July, so the commercial stakes for the chipmaker remain small next to the security question. Santage tracked the same tension in Nvidia's 49% cap on Chinese cloud business and the $35 billion of chip orders from ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent.
| Chinese firms approved to buy or handle H200s | About 24 |
| Approved assemblers with no visible office presence | 2 |
| US government cut on each H200 sold to China | 25% |
| New end date of the Affiliates Rule pause | January 10, 2027 |
Export control on AI chips now depends less on which chip is allowed and more on who stands behind the company that signs for it. A licensing regime that names Baidu and BYD alongside a firm with dangling wires for an office has approved the paperwork while leaving the ownership question to reporters, and by extending the Affiliates Rule pause, Commerce has chosen to keep it that way for at least two more months.
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