Supermicro Names Mark Long CFO While $2.5 Billion Nvidia Smuggling Case Remains Open

Super Micro Computer has a new chief financial officer. Mark Long, 59, took over from longtime CFO David Weigand on Wednesday, Oct. 14, "effective immediately," according to the company.

The hire closes out a search that began in the wake of a board-level independent investigation. After that probe, Supermicro committed in December 2024 to "immediately" start looking for a replacement. It took nearly two years.

Who Mark Long is

Long was previously CFO and chief strategy officer at Western Digital, a data storage company valued at $130 billion. He also runs an investment and advisory firm, Prime Impact Capital.

He co-founded a SPAC, serving as co-CEO and CFO, that raised $300 million. In 2023 it merged with Cheche Technology, a Beijing-based auto insurance technology platform.

He arrives at a company with deep commercial ties to Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang, and to Elon Musk's xAI, which has been folded into SpaceX.

The case hanging over the company

In March, the Justice Department and FBI indicted and arrested Supermicro co-founder Yih-Shyan "Wally" Liaw. Prosecutors allege roughly $2.5 billion worth of Supermicro servers loaded with export-controlled Nvidia chips were routed to China.

The indictment also names Ruei-Tsang "Steven" Chang, a sales manager in Supermicro's Taiwan office, and contractor Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun. Prosecutors say the operation began around October 2023 and ran servers through a Southeast Asian intermediary to end customers in China. The indictment lists Nvidia's B200, H100 and H200 GPUs as subject to U.S. export restrictions.

The alleged cover-up is the stuff of a heist movie. Prosecutors say the group used hairdryers to peel and replace sticky labels. They also say it staged thousands of non-working dummy servers that were physical replicas of real units, because the real ones were already gone. According to the indictment, Sun placed dummy servers on-site in December 2025 and lied to a Commerce Department official who came to inspect machines that had already shipped to China.

Sun has since pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to four counts: conspiring to violate export control laws, unlawfully removing goods from the country, defrauding the government and obstructing justice. His sentencing is scheduled for September 2027, The Next Web reported.

Liaw has pleaded not guilty and resigned from Supermicro's board after his arrest. Chang has not appeared in court.

Supermicro's position

Supermicro is not named as a defendant. It says it is cooperating with law enforcement and that the case has no impact on its business operations. The company says it terminated Sun and cut ties with the other defendants earlier this year.

The March arrest set off a second board-led internal investigation, separate from the one that triggered the CFO search. In August, Supermicro said that review found no evidence current members of senior management knew about the scheme.

That is the company's own conclusion about its own people. No outside body has publicly ruled on it, and no charges have been announced against the company or any current executive.

A history that predates the arrest

Liaw's name has been tied to Supermicro trouble before. He left the company during an internal audit committee investigation, just before a 2018 SEC probe charged Supermicro and its then-CFO with improper revenue recognition. Supermicro settled and paid $17.5 million in 2020.

Liaw returned as a consultant in May 2021, later became a full-time employee, and rejoined the board in December 2023. He sits at the center of the current case.

Co-founders Charles Liang and Sara Liu, who are married, both remain on the board.

The broader enforcement push

Washington has barred Nvidia's advanced AI chips from reaching China since 2022, citing national security. Taiwan prosecutors have separately charged nine people, including former employees of Nvidia and Supermicro, over the shipment of advanced AI servers.

The cases show that demand for restricted hardware is real and that people inside the supply chain are accused of meeting it.

Long's first job is financial controls at a company whose co-founder faces federal charges. What comes next is concrete: Liaw's case moves toward trial, Chang has yet to appear in court, and Sun's sentencing is set for September 2027. Supermicro has not said whether prosecutors have asked for more from the company beyond its cooperation.