Key facts
- Six pallets of Nvidia equipment valued at $11.4 million left Oakland on August 29 bound for Fort Worth, Texas.
- Police traced the truck to several multi-hour stops before losing it in San Bernardino County, California.
- Oakland police said a grand theft report was filed on September 13 and the investigation remains ongoing.
Six pallets of Nvidia equipment valued at $11.4 million left Oakland, California, on August 29 on a truck bound for Fort Worth, Texas, and never arrived, according to an Ars Technica report published November 6 that cited the Mercury News. The hardware was picked up as scheduled by a truck bearing the logo of a food transportation company, the report said, before the shipment disappeared.
The theft was not noticed until early September, when the buyers realized the shipment had never been received, according to the report. Police tracing the truck's route found it had made several multi-hour stops after the pickup before losing the truck somewhere in San Bernardino County, California.
Oakland police confirmed a grand theft report was filed on September 13 and said the investigation remains ongoing. Police have not said what Nvidia hardware was taken or how the theft was carried out.
Ars Technica reported that thieves have taken more than $100 million in similar shipments since June, citing its own earlier reporting, and that investigators cited by NBC News described techniques including GPS location spoofing and staged collisions with police escort vehicles. Nvidia hardware has been a specific target: in 2025, police investigated burglaries of Nvidia hardware valued at more than $7.5 million around Fremont and Union City, California, the report said.
Olaf Groth of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business told ABC News that a chip costing about $550,000 can fetch about $1 million or more abroad, and that growing cargoes and more complex heists point toward "a professionalization of the teams that are hijacking these."
A September theft reported by Wired saw two trailers marked with Nvidia and PlusAI logos taken from outside a California warehouse and recovered nearby; the trailers each held 20,000 pounds of sand, used to simulate freight loads, the report said.