Supermicro Computer announced that Yih-Shyan 'Wally' Liaw, one of its founders and Senior Vice President of Business Development, resigned from the company’s board after an indictment was opened against him in the United States regarding the smuggling of equipment containing artificial intelligence chips from Nvidia to China.
A federal court revealed the indictment on Thursday. While the intermediary company involved was not named in the indictment, Liaw was mentioned alongside sales director Ruei-Tsan 'Steven' Chang and a contractor named Ting-Wei 'Willy' Sun. Supermicro stated that they placed Liaw and Chang on administrative leave and suspended dealings with Sun.
In a press release on Friday, the company said: 'Following Mr. Liaw’s resignation, the company's board is now composed of eight directors,' adding that 'the structure of the board's committees remains unchanged.' The company’s stocks experienced a significant drop, falling 33% in regular trading following the announcement of the indictment.
In a subsequent statement on Friday, the company announced the appointment of DeAnna Luna, who joined from Intel in 2024, as interim compliance officer. Her LinkedIn page states that she was Vice President of Global Trade Compliance and Sanctions.
The indictment indicates that a company in Southeast Asia acted as an intermediary and prepared fake documents to make it appear as if the servers would be used. This company also enlisted a separate logistics firm to repackage and conceal the servers before sending them to China.
The indictment added that the defendants attempted to deceive the compliance team at the server company by placing 'ghost' servers in storage facilities belonging to the Southeast Asian company, while the actual servers had already been sent to China. Prosecutors noted that the defendants pressured the compliance team to approve the shipments and also used 'ghost' servers during the visit of a U.S. export control official.
According to the indictment, these efforts led to approximately $2.5 billion in sales for the server manufacturing company since 2024, including servers worth $510 million sold between late April 2025 and mid-May 2025 to the intermediary company in Southeast Asia and then to China. The prosecutor stated that the server company did not hold a license from the U.S. Department of Commerce to export Nvidia GPU-equipped servers to China.
Liaw appeared for the first time before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Thursday and was released on an unsecured bond, with a hearing set for the bond on Wednesday. The first hearing for Chang was held on Friday, while his detention hearing was set for Monday afternoon.
This report was contributed by Claudia Johnson of CNBC.