$11.4 million in Nvidia hardware vanished between Oakland and Texas amid a professionalizing cargo-theft wave

A summer shipment of Nvidia hardware valued at $11.4 million disappeared between Oakland and Texas. Six pallets left August 29 on a truck that looked like a food-transport hauler; buyers realized only in early September that nothing arrived. Oakland police confirmed a grand theft report filed September 13, and more than two months later there were no arrests or recovery. Police lost the truck after multi-hour stops somewhere in San Bernardino County, and authorities haven’t said what SKUs were aboard or how the handoff worked. The Mercury News first reported the loss.

It isn’t a one-off. Investigators cite more than $100 million in similar shipments stolen since June, with GPS spoofing and staged collisions against police escorts, as described to NBC News. Nvidia gear has been specifically targeted, including 2025 Bay Area burglaries valued above $7.5 million around Fremont and Union City, with investigators pointing to Southern California vehicle sourcing.

This is past random cargo crime. When a chip can fetch roughly double abroad, about $550,000 at source and $1 million or more overseas, as UC Berkeley’s Olaf Groth told ABC News, professional crews follow the margin. GPS spoofing and staged collisions are tradecraft, not smash-and-grab. Gray-market stripping and overseas resale of restricted US hardware sit right next to export-control politics, alongside smuggling rings (smuggling arrest) and shell buyers (New Matrix).

There is a grim comic beat: two trailers marked Nvidia and PlusAI stolen outside a California warehouse held 20,000 pounds of sand each, ballast for autonomous-truck testing, as WIRED covered. Most crews won’t be so unlucky.

Expect the supply chain to harden like high-value pharma or precious metals logistics: more escorts, anti-spoofing, sealed routes and pressure on insurers and hyperscalers to treat last-mile silicon like classified freight. Chips must move from fab to rack for useful AI. If theft scales, the cost is quiet: delayed buildouts, higher landed costs passed into cloud pricing and a black market that undermines export rules and honest buyers waiting in legitimate queues. More in our Nvidia coverage and cybersecurity coverage.