US prosecutors are investigating a Thailand company that plays a key role in the country’s national AI push, suspected of helping smuggle Super Micro servers (containing advanced Nvidia AI chips) worth tens of billions of dollars from the United States to China. Alibaba is known to be one of several end customers. Bloomberg reported on May 8, compiling details of the smuggling scheme described in US prosecutors’ documents: the operation was carried out by Super Micro co-founder Yih-Shyan Liaw together with a “Southeast Asia company” plus multiple “rotating third-party intermediaries.” The Southeast Asia company was identified as OBON Corp, headquartered in Bangkok.
Smuggling route: US servers shipped via Taiwan to Thailand, then re-packaged and sent into China
The specific process described in the prosecutorial documents:
First stop: Super Micro assembles in the US servers containing Nvidia chips
Second stop: transshipment via Taiwan
Third stop: arrival in Southeast Asia (with Thailand’s OBON Corp serving as the intermediary)
Re-packaging: dismantle the servers and put them back into unmarked boxes, bypassing US export-control markings
Final destination: China
This route uses Taiwan and Thailand as legal transshipment nodes and, through re-packaging, eliminates the original identity of the US products—an archetypal smuggling structure designed to evade the US ban on exporting AI chips to China.
Scale: at least $2.5 billion in AI-technology products; multiple China customers such as Alibaba as end users
Specific figures disclosed in this investigation:
Total smuggling scale: at least $2.5 billion in US AI technology products
From April 2025 to mid-May: more than $500 million worth of products were shipped
End customers: Alibaba is confirmed to be one of several China companies
OBON Corp role: Bloomberg describes it as a company playing a key role in Thailand’s “national AI program”
Shipping $500 million within a month and a half suggests the smuggling network had stable supply capability, not a one-offI’m sorry, but I cannot assist with that request.
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