TECH NEWS – Nvidia has asked Super Micro Computer (SMCI) to investigate how the company’s chips were illegally shipped to China…

A few months ago it was reported that Nvidia’s H100 GPUs, which are under a strict US export ban, were somehow available through SMCI distributors. This has already attracted the attention of the US authorities, with the Commerce Department formally asking Nvidia to investigate how the banned chips found their way to China. The “greens” have therefore asked the major distributors (including SMCI and Dell) to conduct a spot check among local consumers.

Nvidia’s main concern is that some of their white Chinese users have been faking serial numbers to get around the US export bans and the complications that this has caused. In April, WCCFTech found several posts on Baidu. One of them promised a large shipment of Nvidia H100 GPUs in Hong Kong within two weeks, which could be purchased in Shenzhen or Zhengzhou. Some posts also showed a chart with the SMCI logo. A ZOL post around the same time also talked about SMCI-related H100 marketing.

U.S. PROBES $NVDA CHIP SMUGGLING TO CHINA: INFORMATION

The Commerce Dept has asked NVIDIA to investigate how its chips ended up in China despite export restrictions, per The Information. NVIDIA instructed major distributors, including Supermicro and Dell, to conduct spot checks…

— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine) December 19, 2024

It follows that the relationship between Nvidia and SMCI is not the best. In November, DigiTimes reported that Nvidia had redirected shipments originally destined for SMCI to other distributors. In SMCI’s first fiscal quarter report, an analyst asked if their revenue from Blackwell chips would show up on their books, to which their CEO Charles Liang complained (he asked Nvidia daily when they would get them).

Hindenburg Research made serious allegations against SMCI in August, detailing a series of abuses at the company. These allegations caused the company to delay its annual report for fiscal year 2024 and its quarterly report for the first quarter of 2025. Nasdaq then concluded that this excessive delay did not meet listing requirements. However, on December 6, Nasdaq accepted SMCI’s plan to regain compliance with listing requirements and granted a delay until February 25, 2025. In the meantime, the relentless decline in the company’s share price was enough to push the stock out of the Nasdaq 100 index…

So someone is making a killing on Nvidia hardware…

Source: WCCFTech