The short version
- Six pallets of Nvidia hardware worth $11.4 million (about ₹100 crore) left Oakland, California on August 29 and never reached Fort Worth, Texas, according to ABC7 San Francisco.
- The shipment was picked up by a truck carrying a food transport company's logo. Investigators later lost track of it in San Bernardino County.
- The Oakland Police Department says it is investigating a grand theft in East Oakland. No arrests have been announced.
- Neither the company that owned the cargo nor the exact hardware has been named.
What happened
The details come from ABC7 San Francisco's report on November 6, which built on reporting by the Bay Area News Group.
According to ABC7, a commercial truck picked up six pallets of Nvidia hardware in Oakland on August 29, as planned. The truck carried the logo of a food transport company. The cargo was meant to go to Fort Worth, Texas, but it never arrived. Investigators later lost track of the truck in San Bernardino County, in Southern California.
The victim, who hasn't been named, reported the theft to Oakland police on September 13, 2026, fifteen days after the pickup. In a statement, the Oakland Police Department said it is investigating "a grand theft that occurred in East Oakland". The case only became public in early November.
Image: Zerocade
What was stolen, and what we don't know
Reports say only "Nvidia hardware". Neither ABC7 nor the police have said whether it was gaming graphics cards, data centre GPUs or complete servers. Some coverage has used photos of RTX 5090 boxes to illustrate the story, but nothing in the reports ties those cards to this theft.
The value is about $1.9 million per pallet. That fits Nvidia's data centre hardware, which goes into AI servers and costs far more per unit than any graphics card, but it could also be a very large load of consumer GPUs. Police haven't said.
Several other questions are still open:
- Who owned the shipment, and whether it was insured.
- Which transport company's logo was on the truck, and whether that company was involved or impersonated.
- Why the theft wasn't reported until September 13.
Why Nvidia hardware is a target
Olaf Groth, a professor at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, told ABC7 that there are strong incentives to hijack these chips wherever security is weak. He said they can sell for around double their price in other markets, and argued that they should be guarded like a national security asset.
There are two reasons the resale value is so high:
- AI demand. Companies are buying every data centre GPU they can get, so stolen chips are easy to sell on.
- Export limits. The US restricts sales of Nvidia's most powerful AI chips to some countries. That creates a grey market where buyers pay well above the official price.
Shortages are also pushing consumer prices up. The cheapest RTX 5070 Ti in US stores now costs about $1,340, nearly 79% over its launch price, and the RTX 5080 is approaching $2,000. Memory makers warn that the supply squeeze could last for years, as we covered in SK hynix's shortage forecast.
Image: NVIDIA
Not the first time
This isn't a one-off. ABC7 reports that police in Fremont and Union City, also in the San Francisco Bay Area, investigated burglaries involving Nvidia cargo worth more than $7.5 million last year. ABC7 also aired viewer video of a separate attempt in September, where thieves hit trucks that turned out to be carrying 40,000 pounds of sand.
What to watch
Watch for an arrest or a statement from Nvidia or the shipment's owner, which would finally say what was on those pallets. If it was data centre hardware, expect more pressure on chip shippers to use tracked, guarded transport. For gamers in India, the theft won't change GPU prices directly, but it shows how valuable anything with an Nvidia chip has become.
