US authorities have charged and arrested the co-founder of Super Micro Computer, Inc. in an alleged multi-billion-dollar scheme to smuggle advanced artificial intelligence chips from the United States to China. The Justice Department unsealed an indictment naming Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw and Super Micro sales executives Ruei-Tsang “Steven” Chang and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun as co-conspirators.
Prosecutors allege the three violated US export controls by conspiring “to sell billions of dollars’ worth of servers integrating sensitive, controlled graphics processing units to buyers in China.” Super Micro, an $18.5 billion California-based company that supplies high-performance servers and data center hardware to large organizations including IBM and partners such as Nvidia and Google, was not charged.
The Justice Department says the defendants used various 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 from April to May 2025. Authorities allege the trio fabricated documents, staged fake equipment to pass inventory audits, and routed transactions through a pass-through company to disguise their real customers, FBI Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office James Barnacle Jr. said.
Liaw and Sun have been arrested and are to appear before a judge in the Northern District of California. Chang, a Taiwanese national believed to be outside the US, is described by the Justice Department as a fugitive.
Super Micro said it has been cooperating fully with investigators and emphasized the alleged conduct violated company policies and compliance controls; the company is not named in the indictment. After the Justice Department’s announcement, Super Micro’s stock, which had risen during regular trading, fell 13.25% in after-hours trading to $26.71.
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