U.S. authorities have charged and arrested Yih-Shyan Liaw (also known as ‘Wally’ Liaw), a co-founder of Super Micro Computer, Inc., in an indictment accusing him of taking part in a scheme to export servers containing controlled AI graphics processing units to China. The Justice Department named two Super Micro sales executives, Ruei‑Tsang ‘Steven’ Chang and Ting‑Wei ‘Willy’ Sun, as co-conspirators.
Prosecutors say the three violated U.S. export controls by conspiring to sell billions of dollars’ worth of servers that incorporated sensitive, controlled GPUs to buyers in China. Super Micro, an $18.5 billion California-based supplier of high-performance servers and data-center hardware that works with customers and partners including IBM, Nvidia and Google, is not charged in the indictment.
According to the Justice Department, the defendants used multiple concealment methods to hide roughly $2.5 billion in server sales to a Chinese company during 2024 and 2025, including about $510 million in sales between April and May 2025. Authorities allege those methods included fabricating documents, staging fake equipment to pass inventory audits, and routing transactions through a pass-through company to disguise the ultimate purchaser, the FBI’s New York field office leadership said.
Liaw and Sun have been arrested and are scheduled to appear before a judge in the Northern District of California. Chang, a Taiwanese national believed to be outside the United States, is described by the Justice Department as a fugitive.
Super Micro has said it is cooperating fully with investigators and that the alleged conduct would have violated the company’s policies and compliance controls; the company itself is not named in the charges. Following the Justice Department announcement, Super Micro shares, which had risen during regular trading, fell about 13.25% in after-hours trading to $26.71.
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