Nvidia’s hardware has been a specific target. In 2025, police investigated burglaries of Nvidia hardware, valued at more than $7.5 million, around Fremont and Union City, California. As reported by The Mercury News, police believe the thefts were carried out by a group that obtained vehicles for the heist in Southern California before traveling north to the Bay Area.
Professor Olaf Groth of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business told ABC News that “if a chip costs about $550,000, then they go for about $1 million or more abroad.” Those margins, he said, may be incentivizing criminals: “Because cargoes are getting bigger. The heists are getting more complex and that will point toward a professionalization of the teams that are hijacking these.”
Not every would-be heist crew gets it right, though. A theft in September, reported by Wired, saw two trailers marked with Nvidia and PlusAI logos stolen from outside of a warehouse facility in California. The trailers were recovered by police nearby, presumably after the criminals cut the locks to reveal they were each loaded with 20,000 pounds of sand. PlusAI is a company working on autonomous trucking solutions with Nvidia, and the sand was in the trailers to simulate freight loads.
