YHK - yet another hacker news clone

$11.4M in Nvidia hardware vanishes during shipment from CA to TX

58 points crescit_eundo 2 hours ago 33 comments

gnabgib 1 hour ago | parent

No one's really said anything about it (maybe the company's in the news for other reasons?), but posted a few times:

Tech-Insider $11.4M of Nvidia Chips Vanished in Oakland (6 points, 1 week ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50394165

TomsHardware Six pallets of Nvidia GPUs worth $11.4M stolen in California in Aug 2026 (7 points, 1 week ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50394256

ArsTechnica Nvidia hardware worth $11.4M vanished between Oakland and Texas (9 points, 6 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50405863

TechPowerup (10 points, 6 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50407874

latchkey 6 minutes ago | parent

Probably trying to find it by keeping it alive in the news.

tencentshill 33 minutes ago | parent

These guys have unlimited money, why are they still transporting with regular couriers? There are tons of end-to-end secure logistics companies out there that can do the job. I can't imagine their insurance is too happy about it either.

It's been an ongoing well-coordinated effort, with gear often ending up in China. Hello, where is the FBI?

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/big-tech/data-cen...

It's going to make a hell of a good movie one day though.

fusslo 30 minutes ago | parent

I don't have an answer just anecdotally I know we'd use UPS (not even usps) to ship classified documents when I worked at the DOE

htrp 7 minutes ago | parent

UPS also somehow delivered stealth F35 Parts directly to China... no espionage required

ozarkerD 6 minutes ago | parent

USPS accidentally delivered a bunch of classified military documents to my parents house when I was a kid. Some government official came out to personally take them back and thanked my parents profusely for returning them.

httpz 3 minutes ago | parent

A classified F-35 component was shipped using UPS and it somehow ended up in China

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/24/chinaf-f35-components-hong-k...

redanddead 27 minutes ago | parent

1/ their insurance doesn't give a fuck

2/ why would the FBI get involved in local police matters?

cyanydeez 20 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, the FBI is busy felatios for Binance and their billion funny-dollar coins!

garettmd 20 minutes ago | parent

Well, it's an interstate commerce incident, which is squarely within the FBI's purview.

nickff 16 minutes ago | parent

Even as someone very skeptical of the application of the 'interstate commercial clause', I must say this is a crystal clear example of it.

reaperducer 16 minutes ago | parent

their insurance doesn't give a fuck

When the company doesn't care, the insurance still cares.

When the police don't care, the insurance still cares.

Insurance always cares.

wnevets 5 minutes ago | parent

death, taxes and insurance caring about these things

roenxi 15 minutes ago | parent

> These guys have unlimited money, why are they still transporting with regular couriers?

Because decisions about how to handle individual units are made based on unit economics. And if you have unlimited money $10 million in lost goods is a rounding error that doesn't require any action.

siva7 2 minutes ago | parent

Brilliant. You're hired ;)

treebeard901 32 minutes ago | parent

Let's assume that Lutnick, Trump and even Jensen Huang were all making money on the side by using their combined involvement to bypass export controls. The $25 million ballroom donation, and likely other forms of quid pro quo to be discovered by a pending investigation. If Trump was informed twice that she was a "spy" over the course of a year, and did nothing, and Lutnick failed to add Megaspeed and others to the export control lists, and the ballroom donation was made... It seems clear to assume that this lost shipment was also being tracked by the Feds and even more likely, they know exactly where it is now. The timing of it all would be too coincidental to not be connected. And if this is the case, all of the above were just caught red handed in an elaborate form of public corruption and quid pro quo that goes from nVidia, through the Commerce Dept and directly to the President. I'm sure there is much more to come on this story...

KeplerBoy 20 minutes ago | parent

11M really is not enough to suspect a conspiracy of this scale.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what a shipment with an Nvidia label to a warehouse contains.

mandeepj 16 minutes ago | parent

> 11M really is not enough to suspect a conspiracy of this scale.

That's how they fool the public, and people almost always take the bait. The above "$11M" is just one of many; the rest have not been discovered yet.

apetresc 4 minutes ago | parent

If "they" are in a position to control the narrative to this degree, then why bother disclosing the "$11M" theft at all? Why not just not report any of it, rather than artificially report about one of many and distort the value?

aorloff 10 minutes ago | parent

The big conspiracy is not $11m of hardware going missing in domestic US, its everyone from Jensen Huang to Trump knowing Huang's girlfriend was a Chinese spy and several mysterious shell companies with a front office that she was connected to in Singapore buying billions of dollars of chips. At least based on reporting so far.

edit : oh and possibly Lutnick and Nvidia covering it up

So perhaps there's another shoe to drop in terms of Nvidia (the DOJ case), and maybe Trump throws Lutnick under the bus when the heat piles on

DonHopkins 27 minutes ago | parent

Oh no, it's Blue State on Blue State crime!

spike021 20 minutes ago | parent

Better find out where Dominic Toretto is.

jansan 20 minutes ago | parent

At current prices that is a quarter of a semi loaded with RTX 5090 boxes.

foxhill 11 minutes ago | parent

~150 GPUs (presuming 80k usd per card). would fit in a sedan.

baq 6 minutes ago | parent

Six pallets? Quite the sedan. Maybe if you unpacked it all and transported without any cushioning, which is stupid.

mihaaly 10 minutes ago | parent

I am bad at geography. Is Southern California close to China? Please help. ;-)

But anyhow, when it is a data-center GPU shipment then no need for trucks, a single van would do.

hulitu 9 minutes ago | parent

> $11.4M in Nvidia hardware vanishes

2 video cards ?

jstummbillig 8 minutes ago | parent

Is that... a lot? I have no clue how much stuff "vanishes" regularly and how much it's worth.

notatoad 2 minutes ago | parent

6 pallets is not a lot to go missing.

atmavatar 1 minute ago | parent

With today's prices, that's maybe enough 5090s for a proper LAN party.

bdangubic 2 minutes ago | parent

so like two chips? :)

chasd00 1 minute ago | parent

Last sentence of the article “Regardless of how this shipment disappeared, carrier verification, shipment visibility and communication remain critical throughout transportation.”

Ugh the evidence suggests otherwise. You’d think $11M in high demand scarce cargo would get a little more attention as far as security goes.