Taiwanese prosecutors say Nvidia and Supermicro staff helped forge paperwork to sneak restricted AI servers into China.
According to Ars Technica, Taiwan has indicted nine people, reportedly including an Nvidia senior manager and two Supermicro employees based in the country, over alleged illegal exports of high-end AI servers to China.
Prosecutors in Keelung did not name the suspects, but Reuters said they were “charged with breach of trust and document forgery.”
One suspect tied to a related case is still at large. Prosecutors accuse that person of the “siphoning of funds from a distributor company involved” in helping China get access to restricted Nvidia chips.
Since 2022, the US has required licences to export certain semiconductors to China. The idea is to protect national security while keeping China from catching up in the AI arms race. The latest Taiwan case follows the March arrest of Supermicro co-founder Wally Liaw in the US. Liaw was accused of funnelling $2.5 billion in restricted AI servers to China since 2024.
Taiwan then launched its own probe into the alleged racket. Investigators found that co-conspirators attempted to fabricate documents purporting to show that 130 B300 servers were installed and running at a Taiwan facility. Reuters reported that 74 of those servers “were ultimately exported and delivered to Chinese customers.” The remaining 56 were apparently headed the same way before Taiwanese customs officials “detected irregularities.”
Taiwanese officials said Nvidia’s manager and Supermicro employees “colluded with one another at various levels for enormous profit, illegally exporting high-end servers, increasing corporate compliance costs, and severely damaging our nation’s international image.”
Supermicro said: “Supermicro is committed to protecting our advanced technologies and intellectual property. We are working closely with Taiwanese authorities on recent events, which underscore the importance of continued collaboration across industry and government to strengthen safeguards, enhance supply chain visibility, and facilitate the enforcement of export control laws.”
The case dumps another bucket of cold water on the idea that export controls alone can keep advanced AI hardware out of Chinese paws.
