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US charges Supermicro co-founder over alleged $2.5bn NVIDIA-server diversion to China
See how this story connectsAn indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court charged Supermicro co-founder Yih-Shyan ‘Wally’ Liaw and two others with conspiring to buy about $2.5bn of Supermicro servers with NVIDIA GPUs in 2024-25 through a Southeast Asian front company and divert them from Taiwan to China, allegedly using dummy servers to pass inspections and fool a Commerce Department audit. Supermicro is not a defendant; a week later prosecutors in California charged three more people in a separate case over attempted GPU-server purchases through Thai companies that were not completed.
Why it matters
Prosecutors allege dummy servers were used to fool compliance checks and a Commerce Department audit on about $2.5bn of Supermicro servers, which puts server makers’ end-use checks under scrutiny.
- When
- 19 Mar 2026
- ID
WTA-N-2026-0030- Where
- United States, China, Taiwan
- Who
- Department of Justice, Super Micro Computer, NVIDIA
- Topics
- Export controls, Chips, National security
- Authority
- US Attorney, S.D. New York
- Target
- Yih-Shyan Liaw and two others
- Action
- criminal charges; $2.5bn of servers (alleged)
- Status
- open · Enforcement ledger
Summary by wheresthe.ai, from Fortune and the reporting credited above. We could not open the primary document, so it is marked Reported. Checked against the source on 7 Oct 2026.
Source copy: download the page as saved on 18 Oct 2026 (PDF). Documents the source offers: document 1 (PDF), document 2 (PDF). Also held by the Internet Archive.
Cite this story
WTA-N-2026-0030: “US charges Supermicro co-founder over alleged $2.5bn NVIDIA-server diversion to China.” wheresthe.ai, 19 Mar 2026. https://wheresthe.ai/d/us-supermicro-cofounder-smuggling-charges-2026-03/ (source: Fortune).
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