Super Micro's Co-Founder Charged Over $2.5B Nvidia Chip Smuggling Scheme
Super Micro Computer's co-founder has been charged with conspiring to smuggle $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia-equipped servers to China — bypassing US export controls through a Thai intermediary — while the company was already under a separate Department of Justice investigation for accounting misconduct. The DOJ case, filed in March 2026, adds export violations to a list of compliance failures that have dogged Super Micro for years. Super Micro itself was not indicted and claims victim status.
The Thai connection
The scheme ran throughout 2024 and 2025. According to Bloomberg (May 8, 2026), the unnamed "Company-1" referenced in DOJ court filings is OBON Corp, a Thai firm tied to Thailand's national AI initiative. OBON allegedly acted as a front, purchasing Super Micro servers packed with restricted Nvidia GPUs and routing them to Chinese end customers — with Alibaba Group identified as one of the primary recipients. The total value of equipment contracted through this channel reached $2.5 billion.
Super Micro servers equipped with Nvidia GPUs were allegedly routed to China via a Thai intermediary throughout 2024 and 2025.
Prosecutors allege that Super Micro's co-founder, Liaw, personally directed the company's cooperation with OBON. Liaw has pleaded not guilty. The indictment targets him as an individual, not the company — a pattern seen in similar export-control cases, where prosecutors go after executives rather than corporations to encourage corporate cooperation.
A pattern of failed controls
This is not Super Micro's first brush with serious compliance failure. Auditor EY resigned from the company in 2024, and a DOJ accounting investigation has been active since that same year. The new charges put the company in the unusual position of facing two simultaneous federal enforcement actions across entirely separate categories of misconduct.
Super Micro's servers are widely used in AI data centers, making them a high-value target for any company — including Chinese cloud giants — trying to build large-scale AI infrastructure. US export rules prohibit shipping advanced Nvidia chips to China without a license, but the OBON case shows how a compliant-looking regional intermediary can make that paper barrier easier to sidestep.
What comes next
The Trump administration eased some Nvidia H200 export restrictions to China in late 2025 via a tariff-based licensing model, creating an awkward backdrop for a simultaneous smuggling prosecution. Lawfare (Jan 2026) noted that cloud-rental alternatives through AWS and Oracle already undermine the formal licensing system — meaning the legal routes and the illegal ones are converging in murky territory.
For Super Micro, the reputational damage compounds an already difficult stretch. The stock has been volatile through both investigations, and any finding of systemic compliance failure — even without a corporate indictment — could trigger fresh scrutiny from customers, partners, and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.