Nine Charged in Taiwan Over 130 Nvidia B300 Servers Bound for China
Prosecutors say the group falsified paperwork claiming 130 B300 servers would stay in Taiwan. August 25, 2026 – 9:31 am
Taiwanese flags (Credit: Canva)
Taiwanese prosecutors have indicted nine people over the alleged illegal export of high-end AI servers to China, among them an employee of Nvidia’s Taiwan operation and two from Super Micro.
This is the first set of charges to emerge from a months-long investigation that has already led to:
- Detentions related to server smuggling
- Infiltrations within Nvidia itself
The prosecution alleges a documentary fraud, where the group produced false paperwork stating that 130 Nvidia B300 servers would remain in Taiwan, when the intention was to move them to Chinese customers.
Seventy-four of those servers successfully left Taiwan, transiting through China, Indonesia, Japan, and Hong Kong before reaching their buyers. Taiwanese customs intercepted the remaining 56, which had been declared for Japan.
Eight of the nine face charges of breach of trust and document forgery. The ninth faces separate charges relating to alleged fund siphoning from a distributor, suggesting prosecutors see elements of both ordinary fraud and export offenses.
“Colluded with one another at various levels for enormous profit, illegally exporting high-end servers,” described prosecutors the arrangement. No individual defendants have been publicly named, and no value has been placed on the shipments.
The B300 is a type of hardware subject to US export controls intended to keep it out of China. Restrictions on Nvidia’s advanced accelerators require licenses for Chinese destinations since 2022, and the transshipment routes named in this case have long been under surveillance by enforcement agencies.
Japan features prominently in this case, consistent with earlier findings that Nvidia chips were being routed to China through Japan. The 56 intercepted units were declared for that destination.
The case does not allege a technical breach; no hacking, counterfeit hardware, or diverted manufacturing, just paperwork stating one destination while the goods moved to another—a common method in export control cases.
Neither Nvidia nor Super Micro is charged as a corporate entity, with both framing the matter as individual conduct rather than company policy. Super Micro confirmed earlier in the investigation that two of its Taiwan staff had been detained, and its Taipei office was raided as the probe widened.
The economic motivation behind the smuggling is clear: B300 servers have sold in China at roughly double their US price, creating a significant margin to tempt those with access to legitimate supply chains and the documents that move through them.
Nvidia has publicly dismissed the trade’s strategic value, with Jensen Huang arguing that smuggled data centers are a dead end because they cannot be serviced or updated. That may be true for large-scale data centers, but 74 servers is a quantity a determined buyer can maintain without official support.
Taiwan has been strengthening its export control regime in parallel with the US, adding Huawei and SMIC to its list and prosecuting cases under domestic law. This indictment reflects that shift.