Bloomberg
Taiwan prosecutors suspect that three individuals successfully smuggled at least one shipment of Nvidia Corp artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China after first exporting them to Japan, people familiar with the matter said.The trio was detained last week by Keelung District Prosecutors Office for allegedly falsifying documents related to exports of Super Micro Computer Inc servers containing advanced Nvidia chips, which the US has barred from sale to China without a license from Washington. The move marked the island democracy’s first public crackdown on AI chip diversion after years of pressure from the US to take a more active role in curtailing China’s tech access.
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang speaks in front of a display showing the Rubin GPU and Groq 3 LPU during a keynote address at the Nvidia GTC conference in San Jose, California, on March 16.
When Taiwanese authorities apprehended the three defendants — who’ve now been officially detained — they also seized about 50 servers for which they accuse the trio of preparing fraudulent export documents. But at least one shipment had already gone through Taiwan customs, according to the people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to speak about an ongoing criminal investigation.That earlier shipment went to Japan before eventually making it to Hong Kong, a known waypoint for hardware that’s ultimately shipped to mainland China, the people said.
