Taiwanese prosecutors have charged nine people, including a senior Nvidia manager and two employees from Super Micro, for illegally exporting high-end AI servers to mainland China. This represents the island democracy’s first known crackdown on the black-market trade of such accelerators.
According to the Keelung District Prosecutors Office, eight of the defendants were charged with breach of trust and forging documents to smuggle 74 servers containing high-end B300 chips. The group allegedly organized the shipments into China via Japan and Indonesia.
The charges add another wave of turbulence to the AI rivalry between China and the United States. U.S. export controls have pushed Chinese companies to seek Nvidia chips through backdoor routes as Taiwan attempts to clamp down on the trade.