U.S. government authorities arrested Super Micro co-founder Wally Liao (월리 랴오) on allegations of smuggling AI chips worth $2.5 billion, Cointelegraph reported on March 20 local time.
Authorities said Liao and sales executives Steven Chang (스티븐 창) and Willy Sun (윌리 선) violated export control laws and illegally sold servers with sensitive GPUs integrated into them to Chinese companies. They were found to have used various methods including falsifying documents, staging fake equipment deployments and concealing transactions through shell companies to smuggle $2.5 billion worth of servers into China between 2024 and 2025. Sales worth $510 million were made in April and May 2025 alone.
Liao and Sun have been arrested and are set to appear in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Taiwan national Chang is staying outside the United States and is on the run after being indicted. Super Micro said in a statement, "The company is fully cooperating with the government investigation and has immediately fired those involved."
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr