California executive arrested over alleged $300m AI server exports

• A grand jury indictment accuses Greg Lui, chief executive of Earthmade Computer, of arranging exports worth almost $300 million.
• Prosecutors allege the servers were routed through Malaysia and Singapore to conceal their destination in China.
• One cited shipment involved 27 servers containing Nvidia H100 GPUs, ordered for about $7.6 million.
• Lui faces three federal charges; the allegations have not been tested at trial.

The US government says California businessman Greg Lui helped route hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of computer servers to China without required export licences. Authorities arrested him on 1 October, after a federal grand jury charged him with conspiracy to violate export-control laws, outbound smuggling and conspiracy to commit money laundering.¹²

The indictment names servers containing Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs, as well as PNY GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs. Prosecutors allege that false end-user and destination information helped send the equipment first to Malaysia or Singapore, where it could be forwarded to China. The manufacturers, freight forwarders and overseas companies are not named in the public filing.¹

A detailed example starts with a January 2024 order: 27 servers containing H100 GPUs, priced at about $7.614 million. The indictment says they were shipped from Los Angeles County to Kuala Lumpur the next day. In March, it alleges, a co-conspirator told a Malaysian official by email that the servers had been forwarded to the Chinese purchaser.¹

Another alleged shipment involved 92 servers. According to the indictment, they travelled from San Francisco to Kuala Lumpur in June 2024, then on to Hong Kong, with an unnamed Chinese industrial company based in Hangzhou listed as consignee. The filing does not identify that company or establish who ultimately used the machines.¹

Prosecutors allege Earthmade received more than $80 million from one Malaysian company and $96 million from another between January and October 2024. They say Lui brokered almost $300 million in sales of controlled servers. Those figures are allegations in the indictment, not a court-established valuation.¹

The case targets the route between US export controls and overseas resale: prosecutors allege the goods were bought in the United States, documented as bound for countries that did not require the same licences, then diverted to China. The indictment says the alleged scheme began no later than October 2023 and continued through 12 August 2026.¹

The Los Angeles Times reported that it could not reach Lui for comment; Reuters reported that Lui and Earthmade could not be reached. Those were unsuccessful contact attempts, not a response on the merits. Lui is presumed innocent unless prosecutors prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.³⁴²

Footnotes

1. United States v. Greg Lui, indictment filed 29 September 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. US Department of Justice, arrest and charges announcement, 1 October 2026. ↩ ↩²

3. Los Angeles Times, reporting on the indictment, 2 October 2026. ↩

4. Reuters, reporting on the arrest and charges, 1 October 2026. ↩