Super Micro co-founder indicted on Nvidia smuggling charges quit board

Super Micro Computer said Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, a co-founder, has resigned from the server maker’s board after he was indicted in the U.S. on allegations of smuggling equipment containing Nvidia artificial intelligence chips into China.

A federal court unsealed the indictment on Thursday. While the company wasn’t specified, Liaw, Super Micro’s senior vice president of business development, was named, alongside sales manager Ruei-Tsan “Steven” Chang and contractor Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun. Super Micro said it had placed Liaw and Chang on administrative leave and stopped working with Sun.

“Following Mr. Liaw’s resignation, the Company’s Board comprises eight directors,” Super Micro said in a press release late Friday. “There are no changes to the Board’s committee structure.”

Super Micro shares plummeted 33% in regular trading, following the indictment.

The company said in a statement late Friday that it has named DeAnna Luna, an executive who joined from Intel in 2024, as its acting chief compliance officer. Luna has been vice president of global trade and sanctions compliance, according to her LinkedIn profile.

According to the indictment, a Southeast Asian company, acting as a middleman, compiled fake paperwork to appear as if it would be using the servers. It had a separate logistics firm repackage the servers to conceal them before going to China.

The defendants tried to fool the server company’s compliance team with “dummy” servers at the Southeast Asian company’s storage facilities, while the real servers had already been forwarded to China, according to the indictment. They pressured the compliance team into approving shipments, and also allegedly employed “dummy” servers during a visit from a U.S. export control officer.

The efforts have yielded around $2.5 billion in sales for the server maker since 2024, with servers sold for $510 million between late April 2025 and mid-May 2025 going to the Southeast Asian company and on to China, the indictment said. The plaintiff said the server maker had no U.S. Commerce Department license to export servers featuring Nvidia GPUs to China.

Liaw had his initial court appearance on Thursday in the Northern District of California, and he was released on an unsecured bond, with a bond hearing set to happen on Wednesday.

Sun’s initial hearing was held on Friday. His detention hearing is scheduled for Monday afternoon.

— CNBC’s Claudia Johnson contributed to this report.

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