A key company behind Thailand’s national artificial intelligence push is suspected of helping smuggle billions of dollars’ worth of Super Micro Computer Inc. servers, packed with advanced Nvidia Corp. chips, to China. People familiar with the matter said Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. was one of multiple end customers.
The allegation sits inside a broader US case prosecutors outlined in March, when they described a scheme in which Super Micro’s co-founder allegedly worked with an unnamed Southeast Asian company and a rotating cast of third-party brokers to divert AI semiconductors in violation of US trade rules. The Southeast Asian firm identified only as Company-1 in the indictment was Bangkok-based OBON Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, though the indictment does not name OBON or Alibaba and US authorities have not publicly accused either company of wrongdoing.
The scale is what gives the case its weight. Prosecutors said the diverted servers were worth $2.5 billion, and people familiar with the matter said some of the servers sold to OBON allegedly ended up with Chinese AI leader Alibaba. Alibaba’s spokesperson denied any link to the alleged trade, saying the company had no business relationship with Super Micro, OBON or any third-party brokers mentioned in the case. The spokesperson also said Alibaba had no involvement in the alleged smuggling activities and has never used banned Nvidia chips in its data centers.
OBON’s role in Thailand’s AI ambitions was public. In a May 2024 press release, the company said it would deploy Nvidia servers in a small data center in Bangkok, a move it said would “empower OBON to launch Siam AI Cloud and revolutionize the country’s AI roadmap.” Siam AI had been incorporated as a separate company four months earlier. The new venture later won Thailand’s first official Nvidia Cloud Partner designation, and OBON was described as responsible for its creation, making Siam AI the country’s sovereign cloud champion.
The backdrop is a tightening global fight over advanced chips. Washington first restricted Nvidia sales to China in 2022, and US prosecutors say the March indictment is the most significant chip-smuggling crackdown since then. That puts Thailand’s fast-growing AI ecosystem in a delicate position, especially after Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang attended a sovereign AI event in December 2024 and said during a fireside chat that “The most important part of artificial intelligence is the data. And the data of Thailand belongs to the Thai people,”
Ratanaphon Wongnapachant, OBON’s chief executive through at least May 2024 and the nephew of Thai billionaire and former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said in a phone interview on Wednesday that he left OBON when he launched Siam AI. That leaves an awkward gap between the public story Thailand was told about building homegrown cloud infrastructure and the criminal case now circling one of the firms that helped build it. For Bangkok, the question is no longer whether sovereign AI matters, but how much of the country’s future chip pipeline can be trusted to the companies assembling it.
