Six pallets of Nvidia hardware valued at $11.4 million disappeared in transit between Oakland and Texas on August 29, with no arrests or recovery announced more than two months later.
The shipment left Oakland on a truck displaying a food transportation company logo and was bound for Fort Worth. The truck made several multi-hour stops in the San Bernardino County area before disappearing. Buyers discovered the loss in early September when the hardware never arrived. Oakland police filed a grand theft report on September 13 and said the investigation remains ongoing. Authorities have not disclosed what specific Nvidia equipment was stolen or how the theft occurred.
The Oakland theft fits a broader pattern. Thieves have stolen more than $100 million in hardware shipments since June, according to investigators cited by NBC News. The criminals use sophisticated methods including GPS location spoofing and arranging collisions with police escort vehicles.
Nvidia has been a repeated target. In 2025, police investigated burglaries of Nvidia hardware valued at more than $7.5 million near Fremont and Union City, California. Police believe a group obtained vehicles in Southern California before traveling north to commit those thefts.
Stolen components are typically stripped down and sold in gray-market transactions or shipped overseas where US tech hardware access is restricted. Professor Olaf Groth of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business told ABC News that chips costing about $550,000 sell for about $1 million or more abroad. Groth said those margins may be driving 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 all thefts succeed. In September, two trailers marked with Nvidia and PlusAI logos stolen from a California warehouse facility were recovered nearby. Police found them loaded with 20,000 pounds of sand each, used to simulate freight loads.