It is alleged that Liaw and other employees at the company sold the AI technology through a Southeast Asian company, knowing that it will be sent to China. Others charged in an indictment, which was unsealed on Thursday include Ruei-Tsan “Steven” Chang and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun, who worked together to violate the Export Control Reform Act.
These products allegedly smuggled “are subject to strict US export controls barring their sale to China without a license,” the indictment stated, quoting the plaintiff. Liaw is also a member of the board of directors at Super Micro and owns shares worth $464 million of the company.Super Micro in its response stated that while it has not been named as a defendant, Liaw works as a Senior VP of business development, Chang is a sales manager in Taiwan, while Sun is a contractor. The concerned employees have been placed on leave and relationship with the contractor has also been terminated.
“Supermicro maintains a robust compliance program and is committed to full adherence to all applicable U.S. export and re-export control laws and regulations,” the company response read.
The indictment order states that a South East Asian company, acting as a middleman, compiled fake paperwork to appear as if it will use those servers, and then had a separate logistics firm repackage the servers to conceal them before sending them to China. Servers worth over $510 million were sold between late April to mid-May of 2025 and has yielded over $2.5 billion in sales for Super Micro since 2024.
Nvidia received a license to export the H20 chips to China recently, with the company agreeing to provide the US with 15% of its sales to China.
