12 comments

  • jstummbillig 11 minutes ago
    Is that... a lot? I have no clue how much stuff "vanishes" regularly and how much it's worth.
    • atmavatar 4 minutes ago
      With today's prices, that's maybe enough 5090s for a proper LAN party.
    • notatoad 5 minutes ago
      6 pallets is not a lot to go missing. could be theft, could be somebody put them in the wrong rack when they unloaded a truck.
  • gnabgib 2 hours ago
    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 9 minutes ago
      Probably trying to find it by keeping it alive in the news.
  • tencentshill 36 minutes ago
    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.

    • Aurornis 3 minutes ago
      > I can't imagine their insurance is too happy about it either.

      Insurance would take the risk of the transport method into account. The policy would say what transport methods are covered and the allowed methods would be used to calculate the risk of loss.

    • kube-system 2 minutes ago
      1. This was 6 pallets, not really a large shipment.

      2. Was it an issue with the courier? The article makes it sound like it was picked up by a truck that wasn't supposed to

    • fusslo 33 minutes ago
      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
      • ozarkerD 9 minutes ago
        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 6 minutes ago
        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...

      • htrp 10 minutes ago
        UPS also somehow delivered stealth F35 Parts directly to China... no espionage required
    • roenxi 18 minutes ago
      > 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 5 minutes ago
        Brilliant. You're hired ;)
    • redanddead 31 minutes ago
      1/ their insurance doesn't give a fuck

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

      • garettmd 23 minutes ago
        Well, it's an interstate commerce incident, which is squarely within the FBI's purview.
        • nickff 19 minutes ago
          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 19 minutes ago
        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 8 minutes ago
          death, taxes and insurance caring about these things
      • cyanydeez 24 minutes ago
        Yeah, the FBI is busy felatios for Binance and their billion funny-dollar coins!
  • foxhill 14 minutes ago
    ~150 GPUs (presuming 80k usd per card). would fit in a sedan.
    • baq 9 minutes ago
      Six pallets? Quite the sedan. Maybe if you unpacked it all and transported without any cushioning, which is stupid.
      • DonHopkins 1 minute ago
        They would easily fit in a Wagon Queen Family Truckster.
  • treebeard901 35 minutes ago
    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...
    • jjtheblunt 1 minute ago
      > 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.

      Let's not, and wait for evidence instead...keeping an eye on your assumption as indeed possible.

    • KeplerBoy 23 minutes ago
      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 19 minutes ago
        > 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.

        • GolfPopper 2 minutes ago
          It's sort of like ants in your kitchen.
        • apetresc 7 minutes ago
          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 13 minutes ago
        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

  • chasd00 4 minutes ago
    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.

  • spike021 23 minutes ago
    Better find out where Dominic Toretto is.
  • hulitu 12 minutes ago
    > $11.4M in Nvidia hardware vanishes

    2 video cards ?

  • jansan 23 minutes ago
    At current prices that is a quarter of a semi loaded with RTX 5090 boxes.
  • bdangubic 5 minutes ago
    so like two chips? :)
  • mihaaly 13 minutes ago
    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.

  • DonHopkins 30 minutes ago
    Oh no, it's Blue State on Blue State crime!