Taiwanese prosecutors on Monday charged nine people, including employees of Nvidia and Super Micro, with illegally exporting "high-end AI servers" to China, adding another wave of turbulence in the AI rivalry between China and the United States, reports infohub.kz.
According to prosecutors, the servers contained graphics processing units known as "B300," which are banned from sale to China. They said 74 servers were delivered to China: 50 via Indonesia, 16 directly, and eight via Japan and Hong Kong. Another attempt involving 56 servers failed, and the servers remain in Taiwan.
AI infrastructure, including advanced semiconductors mostly made in Taiwan, has become a key point of competition between the US and China. Washington began imposing restrictions on Nvidia's exports of advanced chips to China in 2022 and tightened them in subsequent years. In April 2025, the US required licenses for exports of Nvidia's H20 chips to China before allowing some sales to resume later that year.
According to a document from the Keelung District prosecutors' office in Taiwan, under export controls, any sale by Nvidia of high-end AI servers requires a strict review process. The document also said that purchases of more than eight high-end AI servers require company staff to conduct on-site checks of clients.
"We will work with the Taiwan authorities to help them resolve the allegations as quickly as possible," Patrick Rutherford, an Nvidia spokesperson, said in a written statement. Super Micro said in a written statement that the arrests of two of its former employees were due to its cooperation with the Taiwanese authorities and that the company will continue to work to "enhance its robust export compliance program to protect American innovation."
Prosecutors are seeking maximum five-year sentences for four of the nine defendants, including Chang, an Nvidia manager identified just by his family name. Chang was the "key figure" responsible for "authorizing the release of the B300 GPUs" in this case but "demonstrated a clearly poor attitude following the offense," the document said. Some defendants allegedly set up a company in Japan, which helped successfully transfer eight servers, and some allegedly created fake websites and falsified information to evade export restrictions.