California Man Charged with Smuggling Nvidia AI Servers to China

A California man has been arrested and charged with violating export controls by smuggling Nvidia AI servers to China without proper licenses. The alleged scheme, which involved routing equipment through Malaysia and Singapore, is said to have netted over $300 million in 2023 and 2024.

The defendant, Greg Lui, owns a technology company called Earthmade Computer, which purchased the export-controlled equipment from a US manufacturer for approximately $7.6 million. The servers contained Nvidia H100 GPUs, commonly used in AI applications.

Lui allegedly routed the equipment through countries with less stringent export controls before re-exporting it to China. This is not an isolated incident, as authorities have previously indicted employees of Nvidia and Super Micro Computer Inc. for similar allegations in August 2023.