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Nine Charged in Taiwan Over Smuggled AI Servers Destined for China, Nvidia and Super Micro Staff Among Accused
Taiwanese prosecutors have charged nine individuals, including employees from Nvidia and Super Micro, with illegally exporting banned high-end AI servers — specifically Nvidia B300 GPUs — to mainland China in violation of U.S. export controls. A total of 74 servers were successfully smuggled through routes involving Indonesia, Japan, and Hong Kong, while a further 56 servers were intercepted and remain in Taiwan. Prosecutors are seeking maximum five-year sentences for four of the defendants, including an Nvidia manager identified as a key figure in authorising the illegal releases.
Europe Can Build All the Chip Fabs It Wants. It Still Won't Be Sovereign.
Despite heavy investment in semiconductor manufacturing, Europe's technological sovereignty ambitions will make little progress by 2030, with major economies like Germany, France, and the UK improving their tech sovereignty scores by only a couple of percentage points, according to Forrester. The continent remains deeply dependent on US cloud giants — AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud control around 65% of the European market — and "sovereign cloud" offerings from these providers don't truly resolve the issue, as the companies remain US-owned. Rather than pursuing full self-sufficiency, Forrester advises nations to accept unavoidable dependencies and focus on managing them through alliances, open technologies, and targeted investment.
Nvidia Posts Record Quarter, Investors Shrug
Nvidia reported record first-quarter results, with revenue up 85% year-on-year to $81.6bn and net income more than tripling to $58.3bn, driven by surging demand for AI infrastructure chips. Despite beating expectations, shares fell 1.6% in after-hours trading, as analysts noted investors have grown accustomed to Nvidia's exceptional performance and are seeking even higher growth. Concerns about increasing competition, as major clients develop their own chips, also weighed on investor sentiment.