Buyers of U.S. retail chain Micro Center’s flagship Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card have begun asking for receipts to guarantee that their purchases were not intended to be exported outside the United States. Meanwhile, the country continues to arrest suspects involved in organizing the smuggling of Nvidia accelerators into China.
Image source: NVIDIA
on page Reddit Describes the experience of a buyer purchasing a PowerSpec AI90 workstation, which contains a GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, at one of the Micro Center chain stores in the United States. It is known that powerful gaming graphics cards are used to accelerate artificial intelligence systems, so the focus on their export is also increasing. The buyer claimed that he was forced to sign a special statement in which he promised not to allow the purchased equipment to be exported outside the United States.
The preparation of these documents is quite careful; they even ask the buyer for their driver’s license and scan it. In the declaration form, the equipment purchaser must indicate not only his first and last name and his registered address, but also his social security number, email address and contact telephone number. This documentation should indicate who the end user of the device is and where the device is physically located.
The document author does not have the right to transfer purchased hardware to foreigners for use; no exceptions are made. If Micro Center learns that the information provided by the declarer casts doubt on its reliability, it reserves the right to terminate the transaction.
A special export control regime for GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards is effective in the United States starting in October 2023. The regime also applies to GeForce RTX 5090 models released in January 2025. Since then, recommendations for sellers of such graphics cards to control their end-use have come into effect in the United States, but Micro Center has simply decided to hide its liability to regulators by filling out appropriate paperwork at the stage of selling graphics cards to consumers.
Bloomberg likes ReportAccording to news, a man was arrested in California yesterday on suspicion of organizing the illegal supply of server equipment containing Nvidia accelerators to China, with a total amount of $300 million involved. According to investigators, Lei conspired with others through his company Earthmade Computer from 2023 to 2024 to organize the supply of equipment with Nvidia accelerators to China, and such cases did not obtain the necessary export licenses. Logistically, this activity is carried out through third countries – Malaysia and Singapore.
According to investigators, Lu knew his activities were illegal and worked with associates to falsify export documents to avoid raising the suspicion of U.S. authorities. One batch of equipment includes 27 server systems with Nvidia H100 accelerators, worth a total of $7.6 billion. If the court finds Lyu guilty, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
At the same time, familiarity with Chinese official documents allows Bloomberg It is said that Rongjing Technology, a subsidiary of the local government, obtained the financial resources of Xintai Leasing Group and purchased more than 700 servers. Thirty-two of them contain Blackwell generation Nvidia B300 accelerators and are prohibited from being shipped to China. The other server systems purchased in this purchase have not yet been clearly identified, but their characteristics also indicate that they have representatives of the Blackwell architecture. Most of the systems purchased will be installed in a data center located in China’s Gobi Desert.
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