A direct contradiction between Super Micro Computer and a foreign government has added a new layer of complexity to an already damaging export-control investigation.
While the server maker insists it has “fully cooperated with U.S. and Taiwanese officials, while also voluntarily providing information and engaging with all requests from Singapore authorities to date,” Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs characterized the company’s engagement as “limited cooperation.”
Singapore’s government says it first escalated the matter to U.S. authorities on July 7, 2025, a timeline that raises questions about how long regulators have been tracking potential violations.
The dispute over cooperation comes as the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan examines whether entities connected to Alice Huang, a former senior Megaspeed executive, facilitated the illegal movement of Super Micro hardware loaded with NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) GPUs into China.
Super Micro has moved quickly to distance itself from Megaspeed entirely, with a company spokesperson telling Fortune on November 13 that “Megaspeed is not, and has never been, a Supermicro customer.”
Neither Super Micro nor NVIDIA has been charged in connection with the Manhattan inquiry, though the investigation has already inflicted severe damage on both companies’ stock prices.
Super Micro shares closed at $26.865, reflecting a 23.44% decline over the past month and a 6.07% drop in just the past week, while NVIDIA shed 12.75% in seven days to settle at $162.85.
The Manhattan probe is separate from an earlier and arguably more serious case in which Super Micro co-founder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw and two other individuals were charged in March with allegedly funneling roughly $2.5 billion worth of servers containing NVIDIA H200 and B200 GPUs into China through a Southeast Asian front company.
Liaw pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to stand trial in March 2027, with Super Micro maintaining it was a victim and that an internal review uncovered no evidence that current senior management had any knowledge of the alleged scheme.
The company’s own board has separately launched an independent review of certain export-control transactions that it acknowledged “could affect financial results,” a disclosure that has done little to reassure investors already rattled by the overlapping legal pressures.
Against that backdrop, CEO Charles Liang pointed to strong underlying business momentum when reporting fiscal Q4 2026 results, stating: “We added several hundred enterprise and other customers in the past year, generated more than $60 billion in new orders, and booked record backlog entering fiscal 2027.”
The financials offered a mixed picture, with GAAP gross margin expanding sharply to 17.5% from just 9.5% a year earlier, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.70 comfortably beating the $0.9575 consensus estimate.
Revenue of $11.12 billion represented a 93.16% year-over-year increase but fell short of the $11.56 billion analysts had expected, leaving the headline number as both a milestone and a miss.
Liang attributed the margin improvement to “a richer enterprise customer mix,” though his reference to “continued investment in technology leadership, manufacturing scale, and global compliance” now carries particular weight given the scrutiny surrounding the company’s export controls.
Trading at roughly five times forward earnings, the stock’s compressed multiple signals that markets are pricing in substantial uncertainty, and investors will be watching closely for any findings from the Manhattan inquiry, updates from the board’s export-control review, and any revision to financial guidance.
