NVIDIA
Nvidia employee detained in Taiwan.

Taiwan has detained a Nvidia employee as part of a probe into the alleged illegal exports of Super Micro AI servers to China.

Reuters reported that prosecutors detained a suspect named "Chang" on July 24, searching his home and workplace. Authorities did not say where he was employed.

Prosecutors said Chang was a flight risk and there was the potential he could destroy evidence or collude with witnesses, Reuters reported.

The outlet noted that the servers ⁠were equipped with Nvidia chips and were subject to U.S. export controls. ​The trade restrictions were imposed in 2022 and make it illegal to export the servers and the chips to China. The U.S. is attempting to protect its technology, specifically the development of AI frontier models.

The detention comes at a time when U.S. companies and officials are increasingly concerned that China has been acquiring Nvidia chips and coopting U.S. technology.

Several recent AI models made in China have garnered the attention of U.S. officials and companies. GLM 5.2, an open-weight AI model, appeared to be on par with Claude Opus 4.8 and OpenAI's GPT-5.5, Axios reported.

A Graphistry analysis of GLM-5.2 stated that it might be an "illegal distillation of both GPT-5.5 and Opus 4.8." The analysis further noted that "Anthropic reported several months ago that Chinese-origin model companies are performing distillation attacks to steal their model weights, so high correlation scores and similar incorrect answers are noteworthy."

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The concern has spurred lawmakers to consider legislation meant to protect U.S. AI companies and their technology. The bill would, among other things, target alleged Chinese copycats who U.S. AI companies claim is stealing technology to create AI models. The bill, if passed, would treat such behavior as a U.S. security threat. It also would exempt antitrust laws, allowing AI companies to join forces and create a unified response to such action.

Recently, alarm bells sounded over the unveiling of Chinese AI company Moonshot's release of Kimi 3. CNBC reported that Kimi three closed the performance gap with frontier models such as Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT 5.6 Sol. In some cases, Kimi 3 even beat them.

CNBC reported that the White House asserted that Moonshot accessed advanced Nvidia chips in the development of Kimi 3, despite export controls meant to ban them in China.

China has denied any unscrupulous actions relating to the development of its AI models and has repeatedly denied the allegations. However, in March the U.S. Justice Department charged three people, including one of Super Micro's co-founders, with smuggling $2.5 billion worth of the technology into China, Reuters reported.