Nvidia Pressed Taiwan Officials Over Manager Charged in AI Server Smuggling to China

The company's representatives told officials they disagreed with the charges and that the employee should not be under investigation, according to the report. The officials replied that they had no role in the case. Nvidia also asked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. for advice, and TSMC declined to get involved, Bloomberg said.

The account adds to questions over how Nvidia sees its own responsibility for stopping its chips reaching China in breach of US export controls. On the same day, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Nvidia's board 10 days to say whether the company had pressed questionable sales through shell companies to lift revenue.

The manager, identified only by the surname Chang, was detained in July and indicted in August on charges of forgery and breach of trust. Prosecutors in Keelung describe him as the "core figure" in a network that shipped 74 servers containing Nvidia chips to China. Taiwan's Coast Guard seized another 56. Prosecutors allege that Chang helped secure Nvidia's approval to sell 130 servers to a buyer that lacked the data centre space to house them, and that he concealed that the payment came from a Chinese entity. He faces up to five years in prison. Employees of other companies, including server maker Supermicro, were charged in the same case in August.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Nvidia said it had investigated "thoroughly" and found no indication that its employee knew of the alleged diversion effort by employees at other companies. The company said it engaged with authorities, as any company would, to give them the information they requested. A spokesman for the Keelung prosecutors' office said it was not aware of Nvidia's contacts with the government. Bloomberg was unable to reach Chang for comment.

The report does not show that Nvidia's approach changed anything in the case, and the officials it contacted said they had no part in it. Nvidia has no government relations director in Taiwan and only recently advertised the position, according to the report.

The Taiwan prosecution is separate from the US investigation into Megaspeed, the Singapore GPU cloud provider founded by Alice Huang, whom US officials suspect of spying for China. Beijing denies the allegation and Megaspeed denies wrongdoing. Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia's chief executive on November 12 after admitting a relationship with her; the two are not related.

Nvidia, now run on an interim basis by chief financial officer Colette Kress, reports third-quarter results on Tuesday, November 17. Analysts and investors are likely to press management on export compliance alongside the usual questions on data centre demand.