March 20 (Reuters) – Super Micro Computer said on Friday that Yih-Shyan Liaw has resigned from its board, effective immediately, after the co-founder was arrested by the U.S. Justice Department for helping smuggle billions of dollars of AI chips to China.
Shares of the artificial intelligence server maker rose 2% in trading after the bell, after closing the session down over 33%.
Liaw’s resignation was not the result of a disagreement with the company, Super Micro said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday charged Liaw, sales manager Ruei-Tsang Chang, and contractor Ting-Wei Sun with running a scheme to route U.S.-made servers through Taiwan to Southeast Asia, where the products were repackaged into unmarked boxes and smuggled into China.
U.S. officials allege the three went to great lengths to hide their activity, including using hair dryers to remove labels and serial numbers from real servers and placing them on dummy machines left behind after the real ones were shipped to China.
The U.S. has restricted exports of advanced AI chips to China since 2022.
The DOJ said Liaw, a U.S. citizen, and Sun, a citizen of Taiwan, were arrested on Thursday, while Chang, a Taiwanese citizen, remains a fugitive.
Liaw co-founded Super Micro in 1993 and joined its board in 2023, while Chang was a sales manager at the company’s Taiwan office.
Super Micro had said it placed Liaw and Chang on leave and terminated its ties with Sun, who was a contractor, after being made aware of the charges.
Prosecutors did not name Super Micro — a major AI server builder using Nvidia’s chips — in the complaint. Super Micro confirmed it was not named as a defendant in the case, and said it had cooperated with investigators.
Super Micro on Friday also announced the appointment of DeAnna Luna as acting chief compliance officer, effective immediately. She joined the company as vice president of global trade & sanctions compliance in 2024.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona)
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