Taiwanese prosecutors have charged nine people — including an employee of chipmaker Nvidia and two former staff of server manufacturer Super Micro — with illegally exporting high-end artificial intelligence servers to mainland China, in a case that highlights the intensifying technology rivalry between Washington and Beijing.

The servers at the centre of the case are built around graphics processing units known as B300 chips, which are banned from sale to China under US export controls. According to the Keelung District Prosecutors' Office in northern Taiwan, 74 servers reached China through a series of covert routing strategies: 50 were diverted via Indonesia, 16 were shipped directly, and eight were first sent to Japan and then onward through Hong Kong before arriving on the mainland. A further 56 servers were intercepted and remain in Taiwan. Prosecutors say some defendants established a shell company in Japan to facilitate the transfers, while others created fake websites and falsified documentation to circumvent export restrictions.

Prosecutors are seeking the maximum five-year prison sentence for four of the nine defendants. Among them is Chang, an Nvidia manager identified only by his family name, who is described as the "key figure" responsible for authorising the release of the B300 GPUs. Prosecutors noted that Chang "demonstrated a clearly poor attitude following the offense." Nvidia spokesperson Patrick Rutherford said the company would "work with the Taiwan authorities to help them resolve the allegations as quickly as possible." Super Micro, a California-based server manufacturer, said the arrests of its two former employees came as a result of its own cooperation with Taiwanese authorities, and pledged to continue strengthening its export compliance programme "to protect American innovation."

The case is the latest flashpoint in a broad US-led effort to restrict China's access to advanced AI hardware. Washington began limiting Nvidia's chip exports to China in 2022 and has tightened those controls repeatedly since. In April 2025, the US imposed a licensing requirement on exports of Nvidia's H20 chips to China, before permitting some sales to resume. Under existing rules, any sale of high-end AI servers requires a rigorous review process, and orders of more than eight units require on-site checks by company staff — safeguards that prosecutors allege were deliberately bypassed in this case.

The charges underscore how AI infrastructure — the physical computing systems that power large-scale machine learning — has become a critical battleground in the geopolitical contest between the United States and China. Taiwan, a self-governed island that produces the vast majority of the world's most advanced semiconductors, sits at the centre of that competition, making its export enforcement regime an increasingly consequential line of defence.