Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called on Super Micro Computer to strengthen its export compliance controls after arriving in Taipei on Saturday, months after U.S. federal prosecutors charged the server maker’s co-founder and two others with conspiring to smuggle approximately $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia-equipped servers to China through shell companies in Southeast Asia.
Huang told reporters at Songshan Airport that Nvidia insists its partners follow U.S. trade rules. “We insist our partners are compliant. We hope that they will enhance and improve their regulation compliance and prevent that from happening in the future,” Huang said in an address to the media.
Huang’s comments came days after Taiwan launched its first formal crackdown on illicit AI hardware exports. The Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office announced earlier this week that three suspects had submitted fraudulent shipping declarations to export Super Micro servers containing Nvidia AI chips to China, Hong Kong, and Macau.
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The Taiwan case is separate from, but closely related to, the much larger U.S. federal prosecution unsealed in March. That indictment charged Supermicro co-founder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw and two others with conspiring to smuggle approximately $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia-equipped servers to China through shell companies in Southeast Asia. Liaw has pleaded not guilty, and Supermicro has said it’s not named as a defendant and is cooperating with the investigation.
In the same press scrum at Songshan Airport, Huang confirmed that China is included in the $200 billion addressable market he projected for Nvidia’s upcoming Vera CPU during the company’s earnings call on May 20th. “H200 has been licensed to ship to China. It would be terrific to be able to serve that market. The Chinese market is very important. It’s very large, of course,” Huang told reporters, according to Reuters.
Despite the licensing approval, not a single H200 has been delivered to a Chinese customer. While roughly 10 Chinese firms have been cleared to purchase the chip, shipments haven’t started, and President Trump’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing earlier this month produced no breakthrough on Nvidia chip sales.
Huang is in Taipei ahead of Nvidia’s GTC Taipei event and his Computex keynote on June 1st, where he’s expected to explore the Vera Rubin platform’s software stack. He described the platform as “the largest product launch, probably in the history of Taiwan,” noting that each Vera Rubin NVL72 system contains nearly 2 million parts and involves around 150 Taiwanese ecosystem partners.
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