Super Micro contractor pleads guilty in scheme to divert Nvidia AI servers to China

A former contractor for U.S. server maker Super Micro Computer has pleaded guilty to four counts in federal court in Manhattan. According to a court filing made public on Friday, he admitted on Thursday to conspiracies to violate export controls, smuggle goods, defraud the United States and obstruct justice. No sentence has been announced.

Prosecutors charged him in March along with two others – a Super Micro co-founder and a former sales manager at the company's Taiwan office – with conspiring from around October 2023 to divert some $2.5 billion worth of AI servers with Nvidia chips to China without licenses. The indictment says restricted products included servers with Nvidia's B200, H100 and H200 processors. The other two defendants have not been convicted; their lawyers did not immediately comment.

The indictment describes the contractor as a "fixer" who in December 2025 helped stage dummy servers during a Commerce Department inspection of equipment that had already been shipped to China. Super Micro, which is not a defendant, pointed to earlier statements that the case had no impact on its operations and said it had cut ties with all three men.