By Karen Freifeld and Jaspreet Singh
NEW YORK, Oct 9 (Reuters) – A contractor linked to Super Micro Computer has pleaded guilty in a scheme to illegally export computer servers containing advanced Nvidia AI chips to China, a federal court filing showed on Friday.
Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun pleaded guilty to four counts, including conspiracies to violate US export controls, smuggle goods from the US, defraud the country and obstruct justice. He entered the plea on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The United States and China are competing for dominance in AI, with both investing billions of dollars in a technology seen as critical to economic growth, national security and military capabilities.
In March, prosecutors charged Sun and two others associated with Super Micro, including a co-founder of the AI-server maker, with conspiring to divert about $2.5 billion worth of US AI technology to China in violation of export laws.
The scheme began around October 2023, with Sun and others conspiring to export servers from a US manufacturer, widely believed to be Super Micro, to China without the required licenses, according to the indictment.
Asked for comment on the guilty plea, California-based Super Micro referred to its prior statements that the company was not named as a defendant in the indictment and that it had no impact on its business operations. Super Micro terminated Sun and cut ties with the other defendants earlier this year.
A lawyer for Sun declined to comment.
Also indicted were the co-founder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw and Ruei-Tsang “Steven” Chang, who was a sales manager at Super Micro’s Taiwan office, while Sun was a contractor.
A lawyer for Liaw – who co-founded Super Micro in 1993 and joined its board in 2023 – did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Chang’s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.
The indictment described Sun as a broker and “fixer” who facilitated orders and took steps to conceal the scheme. He helped stage “dummy” servers in December 2025 and made false statements to a US Department of Commerce officer during an inspection of supposedly stored servers, which had already been diverted to China, according to the indictment.
Washington has restricted sales of advanced AI chips to China, citing national security concerns. The indictment said Nvidia’s B200, H100 and H200 graphics processing units, and servers containing them, were subject to the restrictions.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and William Mallard)
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