Six pallets of Nvidia hardware reportedly worth $11.4 million disappeared on a run from Oakland to Fort Worth, Texas. As of November 9, more than two months after the pickup, Oakland police had announced no arrests or recovery, and a Berkeley professor warned that the hardware could end up in China or elsewhere.
Olaf Groth, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, told ABC News why the destination matters.
“This is a national security concern as well because we don't know where these chips are going. They could be going to China, they could be anywhere where we have conflict in the world.”
Police haven’t identified the Nvidia hardware on the pallets. Where it ended up is still anyone’s guess. But if a shipment contains advanced Nvidia hardware and someone steals it before delivery, the thief gets to decide who sees the equipment next.
The truck showed up for its scheduled pickup on August 29 bearing a food transportation company’s logo. It headed south, stopped several times for hours at a stretch, and investigators lost its trail in San Bernardino County. The buyers realized in early September that their shipment hadn’t arrived, Ars Technica reported.
Oakland police told FreightWaves the victim reported a grand theft on Sept. 13. That’s when the case reached police. The date of the theft itself remains unconfirmed.
Police haven’t confirmed the $11.4 million valuation or identified the cargo owner, shipper, carrier, or driver. They haven’t said whether someone impersonated a transportation provider or explained the truck’s long stops. Nvidia didn’t respond to FreightWaves’ requests for comment.
Groth gave ABC News a sense of the money at stake. A chip that costs about $550,000 in the United States can fetch $1 million or more abroad, he said. That price gap helps explain why high-end hardware draws thieves, even though police haven’t said whether the Oakland load contained chips of that kind. Groth added that the incentives are strong.
“There's lots and lots of incentives to hijack those chips anywhere where security is weak.”
More than $100 million in similar shipments have been stolen since June, Ars Technica reported. Investigators in other cases have described thieves spoofing GPS locations and staging collisions with police escort vehicles.
In 2025, police in Fremont and Union City investigated burglaries involving more than $7.5 million in Nvidia products. In September 2026, thieves took two trailers from a Fremont warehouse, one bearing Nvidia branding. The trailers held about 40,000 pounds of sand between them. Police recovered both in nearby Newark. Authorities haven’t linked either case to the Oakland theft.
The FBI’s April 30 public advisory describes how thieves can get hold of a shipment before it’s even on the road. They impersonate brokers and carriers, post fake listings on freight marketplaces, and use compromised carrier accounts to take real jobs. They can then hand the load to another driver through double-brokering and use altered bills of lading to send it somewhere else.
The FBI put estimated 2025 cargo theft losses in the United States and Canada at nearly $725 million, up 60 percent from 2024. The advisory describes a wider pattern. Oakland police haven’t said whether any of those tactics were used here.
Separately, and unrelated to the Oakland case, Congress is already asking questions about Nvidia’s safeguards against foreign espionage. In a Nov. 4 letter, Republican Reps. Brian Mast (FL-21), John Moolenaar (MI-02), and Rick Crawford of Arkansas (AR-01) asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to brief their committees behind closed doors on Nov. 18. As I reported at RedState, that request concerns alleged intelligence activity that remains publicly unproven. It’s a separate matter from the Oakland theft.
There are many questions to answer. Who booked the truck? Who signed for the six pallets? Why did roughly two weeks pass between pickup and the report to police? When Nvidia hardware is stolen, does the company have a way to track where it resurfaces?