Super Micro co-founder arrested over alleged $2.5B AI chip smuggling scheme

US authorities say they have charged and arrested Supermicro co-founder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw for allegedly funnelling $2.5 billion in AI servers to China through shell companies.

US authorities say the co-founder of Super Micro Computer, Inc. has been charged and arrested over an alleged multi-billion dollar scheme to smuggle advanced artificial intelligence chips from the US to China.

The Justice Department said in a statement on Thursday that it had unsealed an indictment charging Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, as well as Super Micro sales executives Ruei-Tsang “Steven” Chang, and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun over the alleged conspiracy.

Prosecutors said the trio violated US export control laws by conspiring “to sell billions of dollars’ worth of servers integrating sensitive, controlled graphics processing units to buyers in China.”

Super Micro, which was not charged, is a $18.5 billion California-based tech company specializing in high-performance server and data center hardware for large-scale companies such as IBM. Its infrastructure partners include firms like Nvidia and Google. 

The Justice Department said the alleged scheme involved the trio using a range of concealment techniques to hide the sale of around $2.5 billion worth of servers to a company in China across 2024 and 2025, with $510 million worth of sales occurring between April and May 2025 alone. 

“These defendants allegedly fabricated documents, staged bogus equipment to pass audit inventories, and used a pass-through company to conceal their misconduct and true clientele list,” said James Barnacle, Jr., FBI assistant director in charge of the New York Field Office.

Liaw and Sun have been arrested and will stand before a judge in the Northern District of California. Meanwhile, the Justice Department said that Chang, a Taiwanese citizen based outside the US, “remains a fugitive.” 

In a statement shared with Cointelegraph, Super Micro distanced itself from the trio and labeled the alleged actions as a “contravention of the Company's policies and compliance controls.”

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“The company has been cooperating fully with the government's investigation and will continue to do so. Supermicro has not been named as a defendant in the indictment,” a company spokesperson said. 

Super Micro’s stock had initially gained during regular trading hours on Thursday. Following the Justice Department’s announcement, the stock has since dropped 13.25% to $26.71 in after-hours trading.

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Source: CoinTelegraph