Invoice records from China’s State Taxation Administration reveal that Sharetronic Data Technology Co., a Chinese firm that sells and rents AI servers, procured almost 300 servers containing banned Nvidia AI chips, which it sold to a Shenzhen subsidiary to the tune of $92 million. According to Bloomberg, while it isn't clear which specific chips were contained within the servers or where they were sourced from, all options would have been subject to U.S. export controls to China at the time.
Sharetronic sold 276 Super Micro SYS-821GE-TNHR and 32 Dell PowerEdge XE9680 servers to a Shenzhen subsidiary in May and June 2025, the former containing banned Nvidia H100 or H200 chips. The product page for the Super Micro server says that it has “support for Nvidia HGX H100/H200 8-GPU,” while Dell’s tech specs list the Nvidia HGX H100, Nvidia HGX H200, Nvidia HGX H20, AMD Instinct MI300X, and Intel Gaudi 3 as compatible accelerators. As Bloomberg notes, all of these options were subject to U.S. export controls at the time of the date on these invoices.
The U.S. banned the export of these high-performance AI accelerators in 2022 — well before Super Micro and Dell first shipped these AI servers. This makes it unlikely that the invoiced items are old stock bought before the bans, which some companies stockpiled to have enough supply for up to 18 months. Still, Dell denies any wrongdoing, telling the publication that there is “no record of the alleged sales. If we determine that a customer has diverted our products or transferred them to an unauthorized location or customer, we take swift and appropriate action including termination.”
Sharetronic has been in operation for over 20 years, but pivoted towards AI data centers fairly recently. It founded Guangzhou Fcloud Technology Co. in 2024, a joint venture that focuses on building high-performance computing infrastructure in China. The company soon received an Nvidia Cloud Partner designation, which the AI chipmaker says is for “AI cloud providers delivering infrastructure purpose-built for modern AI workloads at production scale.” Sharetronic announced major hardware procurements after Fcloud received this potent title, while also applying for significant bank loans to fund this expansion. It offered AI servers as collateral for some of these applications, submitting redacted versions of these invoices to a credit agency. While most of these documents only described the servers in generic terms, Bloomberg saw two invoices, dated May and June 2025, which listed the specific Super Micro and Dell models.
“The servers the company and its affiliates have purchased are used to provide clients with computing services, and all related assets have come from legal and compliant channels,” Sharetronic also told Bloomberg, and that it has no “business cooperation or relationship” with Super Micro. However, it refused to answer questions about the source of its servers or who bought them, citing client confidentiality. Despite these denials, the company’s share price hit the 20% price drop limit after Super Micro co-founder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, alongside two other alleged conspirators, was arrested on smuggling charges.
"FCloud will need the required licenses and approvals from both of the respective governments before it acquires any H200 servers," an Nvidia spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "Customers are under express instructions not to provide any controlled servers, support, or service without approval from the U.S. government. Our strict diligence process led to prosecutions of would-be smugglers, and we continue to work with the government to enforce the rules. Building the world's accelerated computing infrastructure is a massive opportunity for U.S. industry, but we can only participate in markets where allowed. The respective governments will decide who supplies billions of dollars of servers to the world's businesses and consumers."
This is not definitive proof that Sharetronic broke U.S. export restrictions, but all these suggest that the company was somehow able to acquire banned equipment despite Washington's limitations. There have also been other instances of public documents revealing the illegal acquisition of sanctioned Nvidia AI chips, which raises several questions about AI chip smuggling. All this has led to a bipartisan group of U.S. senators calling for the halt of the issuance of Nvidia GPU export licenses, especially after the arrest of the Super Micro co-founder.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.