US charges a California man with smuggling $300 million in GPU servers to China
The Justice Department's release on the arrest never says artificial intelligence: from the FBI to the National Security Division, the officials all call it SI.
Federal agents arrested a California tech company owner on October 1, 2026, on charges that he smuggled more than $300 million in export-controlled GPU servers to China. The Justice Department says Greg Lui, 38, of San Gabriel, routed them through Malaysia and Singapore in 2023 and 2024.
He's charged with conspiring to break export controls, outbound smuggling and conspiring to launder money. A grand jury returned the indictment on September 29.
- Defendant
- Greg Lui, 38, of San Gabriel, California
- Company
- Earthmade Computer Inc.
- Alleged value
- More than $300 million
- Route
- Malaysia and Singapore, then China
- Maximum penalty
- 20 years in prison on the conspiracy count
Every official called it Super Intelligence
The Justice Department's release never uses the words artificial intelligence. It describes the hardware as GPUs "commonly used for Super Intelligence (SI) applications", and the officials quoted in it use SI too, from the National Security Division to the FBI.
President Trump gave AI that name in his UN speech in September. I didn't expect to see it in a criminal case this soon.
SI is the defining technology of the era
That line is from John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general for national security. The FBI's Roman Rozhavsky went further and said Lui allegedly sold the Chinese government hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of the technology.
How the scheme worked, according to the indictment
Lui owns Earthmade Computer, based in the City of Industry. Prosecutors say he and others bought high-end servers from US manufacturers on false paperwork claiming they'd go to buyers who didn't need a license. Freight forwarders shipped them to Malaysia or Singapore, and from there they went on to China.
One example in the release: in January 2024 Lui ordered 27 servers for about $7,614,000 and had them shipped from Los Angeles to Kuala Lumpur. In March, a co-conspirator emailed a Malaysian government official that the 27 had been transshipped to a buyer in China. Between January and October 2024, Earthmade took in more than $176 million from two Malaysia-based shipping companies.
This defendant allegedly used false paperwork and shipments through third countries to smuggle more than $300 million in export-controlled computer servers to China.
What the release leaves out
The release doesn't name the companies that made the servers or the GPUs inside them (it says only that the chipmakers specialize in SI computing). Press reports name the chips, but the department didn't.
An indictment is an allegation, and Lui is presumed innocent. Prosecutors expected him to appear in court and be arraigned on the afternoon of his arrest. The money laundering count alone carries a maximum of 20 years, and the smuggling count 10.
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