By Wen-Yee Lee
TAIPEI, July 2 (Reuters) – Super Micro said on Wednesday that two workers at its Taiwan unit had been detained pending a court hearing and two others released on bail after being questioned by Taiwanese prosecutors investigating the alleged illegal export of advanced AI servers containing Nvidia chips.
The servers are made by Super Micro and contain Nvidia chips, which are subject to U.S. export controls prohibiting export to China.
The four workers were among six people questioned earlier this week when Taiwan’s Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office said it had launched a second round of searches in the probe.
The six people were questioned over alleged document forgery and breach of trust, it said, adding searches were conducted at 12 locations, including the homes of six suspects and the offices of three companies.
The companies searched were Super Micro Taiwan, Albatron Technology, Super Micro’s distributor in Taiwan, and Chief Telecom, a data centre operator.
In a letter to customers issued in the United States on Wednesday, Super Micro Chief Revenue Officer Matthew Thauberger said the four employees had been questioned on June 29 in connection with what he described as a Taiwanese investigation regarding the company’s sale of products to a technology company in Taiwan.
“Two of the four employees have been detained pending a hearing, and the other two have been released on bail,” Thauberger wrote in the letter.
“Super Micro is not a target of this investigation,” he said, adding that the company had been working with Taiwanese authorities for several months.
Thauberger said the company had provided Taiwan authorities access to the employees’ desks and electronic devices and had immediately placed all four employees on administrative leave, pending the outcome of the investigation.
In May, Taiwanese prosecutors launched the first round of the investigation, detaining three people suspected of illegally exporting Super Micro’s high-end AI servers, equipped with the Nvidia chips. Those three remain in detention.
In a statement issued in May, Super Micro said it had been cooperating with Taiwan authorities in an investigation into the alleged diversion of its AI servers to the restricted Chinese market. The cooperation had led to the seizure of 50 servers, the company said, adding that they had been deceptively acquired after being sold to an authorised reseller.
In March, the U.S. Justice Department charged three people associated with Super Micro, including one of its co-founders, with helping smuggle at least $2.5 billion worth of U.S. AI technology to China in violation of U.S. export laws.
Semiconductor powerhouse Taiwan is the world’s largest producer of advanced chips used in AI applications.
Taiwan has tightened export controls in recent years to prevent advanced technology and know-how from reaching China, which claims the democratically governed island as its own territory despite Taiwan’s strong objections.
(Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Michael Perry)
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