Supermicro hires a brand new CFO after $2.5 billion Nvidia smuggling case and a 2-year search

Mark Long, 59, changed Weigand as CFO on Wednesday—“efficient instantly,” in response to Supermicro—and he brings with him a stack of bona fides. He beforehand served as CFO and chief technique officer at $130 billion knowledge storage firm Western Digital, and he runs an asset placement and advisory agency, Prime Impact Capital. Long additionally served a stint as co-CEO and CFO of a SPAC he co-founded that raised $300 million earlier than it merged in 2023 with a Beijing-based auto insurance technology platform, Cheche Technology. 

He joins Supermicro at an extremely complicated second for the {hardware} maker with deep ties to Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang and Musk’s xAI, which was folded into SpaceX. Long’s report as a veteran government and tech investor are probably supposed to assist clear the cloud that has hovered over Supermicro for the previous two years and to burnish its credibility with skeptical buyers.

In March, the Department of Justice and FBI indicted and arrested Supermicro co-founder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw in a stunning smuggling case allegedly involving $2.5 billion of Supermicro {hardware} loaded with Nvidia’s export-controlled chips being illegally routed to China. Liaw, together with two others related to Supermicro, was alleged to have gone to extreme lengths to deceive officers, together with utilizing hairdryers to take away and substitute sticky labels and staging hundreds of dummy servers that have been non-working bodily replicas of precise Supermicro servers—as a result of the true servers had already been diverted to China. 

Supermicro is just not named as a defendant within the case, and has mentioned it’s cooperating with regulation enforcement. Liaw has pleaded not responsible. His March arrest, nevertheless, kicked off one other board-led inner investigation—separate from the earlier probe that led to the CFO search—that Supermicro mentioned in August discovered no evidence that present members of senior administration knew concerning the smuggling scheme. 

Until he resigned after being arrested and charged within the smuggling case, Liaw had served on the Supermicro board and had an extended historical past with fellow co-founders Charles Liang and Sara Liu. (Liu and Liang are married and each serve on the Supermicro board.) Liaw had beforehand left Supermicro within the midst of an inner audit committee investigation simply earlier than a 2018 SEC probe charged Supermicro and its then-CFO with improper proceeds recognition practices. Supermicro settled the SEC’s expenses and paid a $17.5 million settlement in 2020. Liaw returned to Supermicro as a guide in May 2021 and ultimately grew to become a full-time worker earlier than rejoining the board in December 2023.

The prior probe, which led the corporate to decide to changing Weigand with a extra skilled CFO, was spurred by the abrupt resignation of auditor EY and investigated export controls and rehiring of workers who had resigned in 2017 after the sooner accounting investigation. As CFO and chief compliance officer, Weigand was held answerable for course of lapses the investigation turned up, which included a consulting association with the previous CFO that EY wasn’t knowledgeable about, the corporate disclosed in 2024.

Since Liaw’s March 2026 arrest, Supermicro has since disclosed that it received hit with a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York associated to each Liaw’s indictment and the corporate’s compliance program and inner controls. It additionally received subpoenas and inquiries from international authorities, the Securities & Exchange Commission, and the Bureau of Industry and Security, the nationwide safety and enforcement arms of the U.S. Department of Commerce that polices commerce compliance and violations. In Liaw’s case, his lawyer knowledgeable the choose the paperwork Supermicro would give the federal government may very well be materials to his protection, and his trial was pushed again from November 2026 to March 2027.

Since then, one of many staff who was indicted with Liaw and labored as a contractor for Supermicro, has pleaded responsible, in response to courtroom data within the case. Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun pleaded responsible final week to 4 counts, together with conspiracy to smuggle items and violate export guidelines and obstruction of justice. 

The final depend is new, in response to Sun’s superseding data doc, and reveals that Sun pleaded responsible to a cost that he deleted an encrypted messaging app on his cellphone on March 19, 2026, the day of the arrests. His sentencing is about for September 2027 and he’s going through a most of 20 years for the obstruction and conspiracy expenses. Sun can also be required to surrender any of the proceeds from the export offenses. His legal professionals didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark and it isn’t laid out in his courtroom data whether or not he has a cooperation settlement with the federal government. 

As the brand new CFO, Long jumps headfirst into the fray. The board lately added Intel’s former IT CTO, Shesha Krishnapura, and one other board member, Judy Lin, retired. Lin was beforehand vice chairman at Western Digital from 2007 to September 2012, leaving after Long started consulting for Western Digital in March 2012 earlier than he formally joined the corporate as chief technique officer in January 2013.

For the position, Long will get a base wage of $725,000 plus a signing bonus of $500,000 and a assured annual money bonus of $500,000. He’ll be eligible to get extra money bonuses and an annual fairness grant based mostly on firm efficiency and his particular person achievement. As for fairness, Long received an preliminary fairness grant valued at about $4.1 million based mostly on Thursday’s inventory value, and choices on 150,000 shares. 

Supermicro declined to make Long accessible for interviews. In an announcement CEO Charles Liang welcomed Long and thanked Weigand. Liang mentioned Long would have “a direct optimistic affect” in strengthening the corporate’s monetary execution. 

Weigand will keep to help within the CFO transition. A Supermicro spokesperson mentioned additional particulars about his position could be shared at a later date.