U.S. media revealed that a company linked to Thailand's national AI project is suspected of helping smuggle Nvidia server chips worth billions of dollars to China, while Alibaba denies any involvement.
On 9 May 2026, Bloomberg News reported that U.S. authorities suspect a company connected to Thailand's national artificial intelligence project may have helped illegally export servers containing advanced Nvidia processing chips to China, with a total value of several billion U.S. dollars.
The report states that the intermediary company, called “Company-1” by U.S. prosecutors, has been identified by Bloomberg as OBON Corp, based in Bangkok, citing sources familiar with the case. Alibaba Group is also named as one of the end customers of these servers.
An Nvidia spokesperson told Reuters via email that the company expects its ecosystem partners to strictly comply with regulations at every level and will continue working with governments to enforce export controls.
Alibaba Group clarified that it has no business relationship with Super Micro Computer, OBON Corp, or the third-party brokers mentioned in the indictment, and affirmed that it has never used banned Nvidia chips in its data centers.
The report notes that in March, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Liao Yixian, co-founder of Super Micro Computer, along with a sales executive and a contractor, with conspiring to export U.S.-made servers through Taiwan to Southeast Asia, repackaging them in unmarked boxes, and illegally shipping them onward to China.
U.S. prosecutors stated that U.S. AI technology worth at least 2.5 billion U.S. dollars (approximately 92.5 billion baht) was moved, with over 500 million U.S. dollars (around 18.5 billion baht) exported between April and mid-May 2025.
Bloomberg further reported that some of the servers sold to OBON were forwarded on to Alibaba.
Since 2022, the U.S. has banned exports of high-performance Nvidia chips to China over concerns they could be used for military purposes, although the U.S. government allowed sales of the slightly lower-tier H200 chips under certain conditions starting in January.