A co-conspirator in a scheme to send Super Micro servers containing Nvidia chips to China has pleaded guilty, according to Tom's Hardware. The case against the individuals came to light earlier this year after authorities discovered the servers had been diverted. The three people involved sent the servers to a Southeast Asian company, which then faked paperwork and built dummy servers to show inspectors.
Workers used hair dryers to remove serial numbers from the real servers and moved those numbers onto the dummy server shells, while the actual servers were shipped to China. Investigators later found that the three used a Thailand-based corporation to receive the servers, which were then delivered to Alibaba. The Chinese tech giant has denied receiving the banned Nvidia hardware.
Super Micro has also denied knowing about the operation, even though it has brought in $2.5 billion in sales since the scheme began in 2024. Shareholders have sued the company, saying it hid its reliance on illicit sales to China. Liaw has pleaded not guilty and was released on a $5 million bond. The Super Micro co-founder is scheduled to go to trial on Nov. 2, while the third co-conspirator, Chang, is still a fugitive.
Taiwanese authorities are building their own case over the illegal shipment of AI chips to China. Investigators raided some Super Micro offices and the homes of six individuals. The company denied that its premises were raided, saying it cooperated with police and gave access to the workstations and gadgets of employees under investigation. Super Micro also said it has worked with U.S. and Taiwanese authorities on the smuggling investigation and fired several employees after completing its own independent investigation. Taiwan then indicted nine more people tied to the illegal smuggling of Nvidia B300 GPUs.
Sun's guilty plea is the latest step in the U.S. crackdown on illegal AI chip exports. It follows the arrest in California of another tech CEO for smuggling $300 million in Nvidia AI servers to China. The cases signal how seriously the White House is treating the protection of its hardware advantage over Beijing in the AI race, even as AI development faces challenges at home.
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