Taiwan Indicts Nvidia Manager Over Chip Shipments to China
Prosecutors want five years for a senior Nvidia manager they believe is the core figure in a scheme involving the shipment of 74 servers containing B300 chips to China.
August 24, 2026 – 3:10 pm
Credit: Will Buckner
Taiwanese prosecutors have indicted a senior Nvidia manager and eight others over an alleged scheme to smuggle AI chips. They are charged with forgery and breach of trust.
This is the first known criminal case against an Nvidia employee related to AI chip smuggling. The manager, surnamed Chang, was detained in July and has been unreachable since. Nvidia as a company is not accused of wrongdoing.
The volume of chips involved is modest by black-market standards but significant legally. Seventy-four servers with high-end B300 chips allegedly reached China via Japan and Indonesia, while 56 others were seized before they could leave.
Eight others were charged alongside Chang. They include two senior Super Micro employees and staff from four more firms, including reseller Albatron and Flying Tiger, named as the purported end user.
The economic motive is clear. TNW reports that B300 servers in China fetch around $1 million each, nearly double their American price.
What raises concerns within the industry is the failure of a safeguard. Super Micro’s Taiwan arm refuses to sell to buyers who have not passed checks by its own staff and Nvidia’s, including an in-person audit for orders of eight units or more.
Prosecutors claim that this audit was staged. Chang and one of the indicted Super Micro employees fooled "unsuspecting" colleagues into visiting a data center and concealed that Flying Tiger had not leased enough space for the hardware.
Chang then reported the inspection as complete, and Super Micro approved the sale of 130 servers delivered in three phases, 74 of which were routed to Chinese buyers.
In response, Nvidia has reduced the number of approved Asian customers on its whitelist. The company has cut more than half of Flying Tiger’s former clients from this list.
Europe watches this situation with interest but lacks robust rules. Advanced AI accelerators are not controlled on the EU’s dual-use list due to a Russian veto at the Wassenaar Arrangement, leaving national measures and American extraterritorial reach to fill the gap.
The controls that caught this scheme were Taiwanese and American. The European Commission has been reformulating its export regime since last year, but the servers continued to move through whatever jurisdiction was slowest.