Chinese Nationals Charged for Illegally Exporting Millions in Nvidia’s Advanced AI Chips to China

Two individuals of Chinese nationality stand accused by the United States Department of Justice of orchestrating an illegal export operation involving millions of dollars’ worth of Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips. This scheme aimed to bypass U.S trade restrictions, enacted during the intensifying technological rivalry between Washington and Beijing.

The accused, Chuan Geng and Shiwei Yang, are alleged to have utilized ALX Solutions—a California-based front company—to ship restricted semiconductor technology to China without valid export licenses over a three-year span.

The illicit operation primarily focused on procuring Nvidia’s H100 graphics processing units, specifically designed for training large AI models, and GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs—high-performance graphics cards employed for gaming and AI applications.