Oakland (USA), November 9. Police in the California city of Oakland are investigating the theft of a shipment belonging to the American company Nvidia worth $11.4 million: six pallets of its computing hardware vanished on the way from Oakland to Fort Worth, Texas, the Bay Area News Group reported.
The shipment left Oakland on August 29. According to the authorities, a truck marked as belonging to a food transport company picked it up as planned. Investigators later lost track of the vehicle in San Bernardino County in southern California, ABC7 San Francisco reported.
Oakland police describe the incident in a statement as “grand theft” committed in East Oakland; the victim reported the crime on September 13, 2026, 15 days after the shipment left. Police have announced no arrests, and the investigation continues.
Olaf Groth, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, with expertise in artificial intelligence and the global economy, explained the thieves’ interest by price: outside the United States such chips cost roughly twice as much as inside the country. If a chip costs about $550,000, he said, abroad buyers pay about a million dollars or more. The scale and complexity of such thefts, Groth believes, point to the professionalisation of criminal groups. He called the hardware “a national security asset”: it is unknown where the stolen chips end up, and they could be in China or anywhere in the world where there is conflict, he told the broadcaster. Police have not said anything about possible buyers.
In September, according to ABC7, there was another attempt: the broadcaster received video from a viewer, and police explained that the suspects believed the trucks were carrying expensive Nvidia equipment but found 40,000 pounds of sand (about 18 tonnes). The technology outlet Hackster writes that these were two trailers bearing Nvidia and PlusAI logos, used to test autonomous trucks.
What it means: A shipment of hardware for artificial intelligence systems disappeared on the road between two states, and police learned of it only 15 days after it left. Oakland police confirmed a grand theft in East Oakland and the date of the report. The $11.4 million figure and the route come from Bay Area News Group, while prices abroad and possible buyers are discussed by an expert, not by investigators.
What we know now: There have been no arrests, and whether the shipment has been found is unknown: there are no reports. Oakland police lead the investigation; they do not name the victim.
Background: This is not the first theft of Nvidia cargo in the San Francisco Bay Area. Last year, the East Bay Times reported, police in Fremont and Union City investigated burglaries in which Nvidia cargo worth more than $7.5 million disappeared. Nvidia makes the computing accelerators on which artificial intelligence systems run; the United States restricts exports of the most powerful of them to China, The American Bazaar notes.
We have also reported on the head of Nvidia’s first visit to Kazakhstan and on his meeting with President Tokayev.
