May 8 (Reuters) – A firm linked to Thailand’s national AI initiative is suspected of helping smuggle billions of dollars’ worth of Super Micro Computer servers containing advanced Nvidia chips to China, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The intermediary buyer was an unnamed Southeast Asian firm referred to by prosecutors as “Company-1”, which Bloomberg identified as Bangkok-based OBON Corp, citing the sources.
Alibaba Group Holding was among the end customers, the report added.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Nvidia, Super Micro Computers and Alibaba Group also did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment, while OBON could not be immediately reached.
An Alibaba spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company has no business relationship with Super Micro, OBON or any third-party brokers mentioned in the indictment.
In March, the U.S. Justice Department charged Super Micro co-founder Yih-Shyan Liaw, sales manager Ruei-Tsang Chang and contractor Ting-Wei Sun with running a scheme to route U.S.-made servers through Taiwan to Southeast Asia, where they were repackaged into unmarked boxes and smuggled into China.
Prosecutors alleged the group moved at least $2.5 billion in U.S. AI technology, including more than $500 million shipped between April and mid-May 2025.
Some of the $2.5 billion servers sold to OBON allegedly went to Alibaba, the report added.
The United States banned the export of high-end chips from Nvidia to China in 2022 amid concerns that they could be used for military purposes, though it later approved sales of Nvidia’s second-most powerful H200 chips in January this year under certain conditions.
Separately, Super Micro shareholders sued the Silicon Valley server maker in March, accusing it of securities fraud by allegedly concealing its reliance on sales to China that violated U.S. export laws.
(Reporting by Preetika Parashuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Sumana Nandy)
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