GoKawiilThe U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has charged associates of an unidentified U.S. server maker with illegally diverting billions of dollars in Nvidia -powered servers to China.
The U.S. government has been trying to figure out how high-powered chips have reached China without authorization, as American artificial intelligence companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI face challenges from DeepSeek and other Chinese rivals.
In an indictment unsealed Thursday, the U.S. government alleged that Yih-Shyan "Wally" Liaw, Ruei-Tsan "Steven" Chang and Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun worked together to violate the Export Control Reform Act.
The server company's products containing Nvidia chips "are subject to strict U.S. export controls barring their sale to China without a license," the plaintiff said in the indictment. "Those controls are in place to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, among other things."
Liaw is a co-founder of server maker Super Micro Computer and a member of its board of directors. He controls $464 million worth of Super Micro shares, according to FactSet. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Shares of Super Micro fell 33% on Friday after a federal court released the indictment.
Super Micro said that while the company isn't named as a defendant, Liaw works as senior vice president of business development, Chang is a sales manager in Taiwan, and Sun is a contractor. The company has placed the employees on leave and ended its relationship with the contractor.
Liaw and Sun were both arrested Thursday, while Chang is a fugitive, the attorney's office said.
"The conduct by these individuals alleged in the indictment is a contravention of the Company's policies and compliance controls, including efforts to circumvent applicable export control laws and regulations," according to a statement. "Supermicro maintains a robust compliance program and is committed to full adherence to all applicable U.S. export and re-export control laws and regulations."