Taiwan Indicts Nine People, Including Nvidia and Super Micro Staff, Over Alleged AI Server Smuggling to China

Prosecutors in Taiwan have indicted nine people, including employees of Nvidia and Super Micro Computer, over an alleged scheme to illegally export AI servers built with restricted Nvidia chips to China. The Keelung District Prosecutors Office announced the indictments on August 24, 2026, closing out the charging phase of an investigation that has been running since at least May.

What Prosecutors Allege

According to the Keelung prosecutors, the nine defendants, whose full names were not disclosed, illegally exported high-end AI servers to China despite being “fully aware” that both Nvidia and Super Micro maintain “rigorous” internal export control procedures. In a statement, prosecutors said the defendants “colluded with one another at various levels for enormous profit, illegally exporting high-end servers, increasing corporate compliance costs, and severely damaging our nation’s international image,” according to Engadget and Asharq Al-Awsat, which both cited the prosecutors’ statement.

The underlying chips are subject to United States export controls that have barred the sale of cutting-edge Nvidia AI silicon to China since 2022. Washington has since relaxed some of those rules, permitting sales of older-generation products such as H200 chips, but it continues to restrict the newest hardware, and Taiwan has taken an aggressive enforcement posture against attempts to route that hardware around the rules.

A Monthslong Investigation Escalates

Today’s indictments are the formal charging stage of a probe that widened significantly over the summer, as detailed in Tom’s Hardware‘s reporting on the case. Prosecutors made their first arrests in May, when three suspects were accused of using falsified export documents, then widened the investigation with additional raids in June that hit roughly a dozen sites, including Super Micro’s Taiwan office and other supply chain partners, as the number of suspects under investigation grew from three to nine. Investigators allege that falsified paperwork was used to disguise the shipment of roughly 50 Super Micro servers, loaded with Nvidia’s high-end GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra chips and worth an estimated $21 million, so they could reach China despite the export restrictions.

On July 24, prosecutors searched Nvidia’s Taipei office and detained a senior business development manager there, identified in Reuters and Bloomberg reporting only by the surname Chang, on suspicion of falsifying documents. That detention brought the case’s total to seven people held in custody, a group that also included executives from server distributor Ching Yun Technology, Super Micro employees, and a data center operator. Those earlier detentions fed into the broader case that produced today’s indictment of nine people.

Nvidia’s Response

When its employee was first detained in late July, Nvidia said through a spokesperson that smuggling is a “nonstarter” for the company, and that any product diverted to unauthorized markets would receive “no service, support or updates,” according to Forbes. Neither Nvidia nor Super Micro had responded to requests for comment on today’s indictments at the time of publication, Asharq Al-Awsat reported.

Nvidia’s chips sit at the center of the case even though the company is American: most of its silicon is manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and even chips fabricated at TSMC’s Arizona plant are shipped back to Taiwan for advanced packaging before reaching customers, Engadget noted. That supply chain link is part of why Taiwanese authorities have been so aggressive about policing where the finished servers end up.

Part of a Wider Enforcement Pattern

The Keelung case is one of several enforcement actions targeting attempts to route restricted Nvidia hardware into China through intermediary countries. Reports have described roughly $1 billion worth of server racks shipped through Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand or Malaysia in one case, while United States prosecutors separately charged three people with exporting an estimated $3.5 billion worth of AI servers to China by routing them through third-party countries. Taiwan’s Keelung investigation, and the broader web of raids and detentions that led up to it, points to sustained scrutiny of the entire AI hardware supply chain as both Washington and Taipei try to keep the most advanced chips out of Chinese hands.