Bangkok-based OBON Corp is identified as the unnamed Southeast Asian middleman in a $2.5 billion chip diversion scheme
Bloomberg / Getty Images
Federal prosecutors had identified the intermediary only as an unnamed Southeast Asian company in a March indictment targeting three Super Micro associates. Bloomberg identified that firm as OBON Corp. The indictment does not name OBON or Alibaba, and U.S. authorities have not publicly accused either company of wrongdoing.
Alibaba told Reuters it has no business relationship with Super Micro, OBON, or any third-party brokers mentioned in the indictment, and said banned Nvidia chips have never been used in its data centers. OBON could not be reached for comment.
The March indictment charged Super Micro co-founder Yih-Shyan "Wally" Liaw, Taiwan-based sales manager Ruei-Tsang "Steven" Chang, and outside contractor Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun with violating U.S. export control law. All three have pleaded not guilty. According to prosecutors, the scheme involved shipping servers from Taiwan to the Southeast Asian middleman, where a separate logistics firm stripped them of identifying markings and reboxed them before the hardware was sent onward to China. The scheme generated about $2.5 billion in sales for Super Micro since 2024, including more than $500 million shipped between late April and mid-May 2025.
The indictment alleges that fake servers were placed in the intermediary's storage facilities to mislead Super Micro's compliance team — by which point the genuine hardware had already been sent to China — and that one defendant steered the audit process toward a reviewer he described as amenable to approving the shipments. Within days, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security issued a directive freezing all outbound shipments to the company, and that directive had not been lifted by the time the March indictment was filed.
According to Bloomberg, OBON created Siam AI, a Thai sovereign cloud initiative that subsequently became the first company in Thailand to receive an official Nvidia Cloud Partner designation. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang appeared at a Siam AI event in Bangkok in December 2024. Through at least May 2024, Ratanaphon Wongnapachant — whose uncle is former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra — held the chief executive role at OBON while also leading Siam AI. He told Bloomberg he left OBON when he launched Siam AI and said that company is not involved in the matter.
In a written statement, Nvidia said its partners are required to uphold rigorous compliance standards throughout their operations, and that the chipmaker intends to keep cooperating with federal authorities on enforcement.
Super Micro's share price dropped 33% in the trading session following the indictment's release. The server maker has since opened an internal probe, and its CEO stated on a recent earnings call that the alleged misconduct was limited to the individuals the Justice Department charged.
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