Ex-Supermicro contractor pleads guilty in U.S. case over $510 million AI server smuggling to China

TingWei Sun, a former contractor for Super Micro Computer (Supermicro), has pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court in New York for his role in illegally shipping servers equipped with NVIDIA's high-end AI chips to China. Sun admitted to four offenses: conspiracy to violate export controls, conspiracy to smuggle, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, and obstruction of justice. U.S. prosecutors previously charged three people in total, including Supermicro co-founder YihShyan Liaw and the company's Taiwan office general manager RueiTsang Chang. The U.S. Department of Justice has said a Southeast Asian intermediary bought about $2.5 billion of equipment from the U.S. server makers involved between 2024 and 2025. Prosecutors allege that at least $510 million in servers was unlawfully shipped to China within a matter of weeks in 2025. According to the allegations, the servers were typically routed through Taiwan before being repackaged and forwarded to China. To avoid detection, investigators say the suspects stocked warehouses with thousands of nonfunctional dummy servers and used hair dryers to remove labels and serial numbers. Prosecutors said Sun helped set up the dummy servers and made false statements during inspections by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Supermicro is not named as a defendant. The company said it has cut ties with all three individuals and that an independent review released in August found no evidence current executives knew of the smuggling scheme. (Source: BlockBeats)