In the early hours of today, Wally Liaw, co-founder of Supermicro, one of the world's largest AI server manufacturers and a core supply chain partner of Nvidia, was arrested in California. Liaw has held key positions since the company's founding in 1993 and is currently its senior vice president and board member. He is accused of smuggling Nvidia AI chip servers worth $2.5 billion into China through shell companies in Southeast Asia. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison. It is reported that Supermicro secured $13 billion worth of orders for Nvidia's Blackwell chips in a single quarter last year.
