Several firms granted clearance by the U.S. government to import Nvidia’s H200 AI processors may be shells or possess direct ties to the military of the People’s Republic of China, according to a report by the New York Times. The findings highlight potential gaps in export controls, noting that companies like Mag Infra are suspected of having links to the blacklisted firm Inspur, while another authorized handler, New Matrix, maintains a registered address that is currently an empty space.
The allegations surface as approximately 600,000 H200 chips remain stalled in Hong Kong due to import restrictions imposed by Beijing to encourage the use of domestic hardware. While China has granted small-scale import approvals of roughly 10,000 chips for select technology giants to use in model training, it has largely blocked their use in deployment tasks. This supply shortage has driven the cost of an eight-card H200 server to 6 million yuan, or about $900,000, on the gray market, representing a threefold increase over a year ago.