SuperMicro denied that its management was involved in the alleged smuggling of chips to China

One of Nvidia’s key partners—the U.S. server manufacturer SuperMicro, whose co-founder was accused of smuggling advanced U.S. chips into China—has completed an internal independent investigation into the allegations leveled against its management. The investigative team concluded that the company’s current senior management was unaware of the alleged scheme to ship Nvidia chips to China in circumvention of restrictions. The company itself reported this in a press release.

Following this news, SuperMicro shares rose 5.9% during trading on August 20, but then gave up those gains and, at the time of publication, are trading at roughly the same level as the August 19 closing price. Year-to-date, despite the allegations against the company’s co-founder, the stock is still up more than 22%.

An internal independent investigation at SuperMicro began after U.S. prosecutors charged SuperMicro co-founder Yixian (“Wally”) Liao and two other company employees with illegally shipping servers containing Nvidia chips worth billions of dollars to China in circumvention of U.S. export restrictions. According to the indictment, they initially shipped the equipment to a company in Southeast Asia and then coordinated the shipment of the chips to end customers in China.

According to prosecutors, the smuggling scheme involved attempts by the defendants to evade scrutiny from both SuperMicro auditors and the U.S. government. To do so, the prosecution alleges, they, among other things, falsified documents and created “dummy” servers, from which they used a hair dryer to remove and then re-stick the serial numbers. All three defendants have pleaded not guilty.

An independent internal investigation by the company, however, found no evidence of direct sales of SuperMicro products to sanctioned entities. Nor did it find any grounds to doubt the accuracy of previously published data in the company’s financial statements—due to possible unauthorized shipments. The company also reported that “personnel actions, including terminations,” had been taken against employees in the sales, technical support, and business development departments for failing to comply with internal policies or the corporate code of ethics.

Independent directors have prepared recommendations for further improving SuperMicro’s export control program, which the board of directors has approved in full, according to a company statement. SuperMicro co-founder Liao Yixian left the board earlier this spring amid allegations against him, Bloomberg reports.

The U.S. is extending export control rules to Nvidia’s cutting-edge chips, as these products are essential for training and running the latest artificial intelligence systems, including those developed by OpenAI and Anthropic, Bloomberg explains. As a result, partners of the American giant—such as SuperMicro, which builds its servers using Nvidia components—are also subject to similar restrictions.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor