Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media
In a purported first-of-its-kind case, a Houston-area man pleaded guilty to federal charges of smuggling $160 million worth of high-powered semiconductors with the goal of sending them to China and Hong Kong, according to prosecutors. Case records were unsealed Monday.
Alan Hao Hsu, 43, of Missouri City and his company Hao Global LLC were charged with smuggling goods from the United States and unlawful export of information between October 2024 and May 2025. U.S. attorneys accused him of purchasing the chips from a North Carolina supplier and attempting to send them overseas by lying on shipping documents.
“Hao Global was a shell company that had virtually no assets or resources,” U.S. Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei said during a news conference Monday. “Instead, Hsu funded this scheme with more than $50 million in wire transfers from companies and individuals that tied back to China, including money from a Hong Kong-based logistics company.”
Attorneys for Hsu and Hao Global LLC declined to comment. Hsu’s sentencing is set for Feb. 18.
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Though some records in Hsu’s case were unsealed, many could not be accessed Monday on the federal courts’ online database. Ganjei characterized Hsu’s arrest in May and conviction in November as the first ever in an artificial intelligence diversion case.
The chips Hsu allegedly admitted to smuggling were Nvidia H100 and H200 tensor core graphic processing units, or GPUs. Ganjei said the chips are much more powerful than GPUs used for home computers.
“They are designed to train and run AI,” he said. “And we’re not talking about AI like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. Rather, this AI can be used for direct military applications, such as designing weapons, operating drones and analyzing intelligence data.”
Ganjei said the chips would be sent overseas under false pretenses, such as saying the shipment contained “adapter modules, adapter cards and computer servers,” rather than semiconductors. He added that law enforcement was able to “disrupt Hsu’s scheme and seize millions of dollars of GPUs and prevent approximately 100 million more from heading overseas.”
Prosecutors did not speculate as to whether or not foreign governments were involved in the scheme, or what was being done with the chips.
Federal prosecutors also announced the related arrests of two individuals in New York and Virginia. Those two people are accused of attempting to mislabel semiconductors with the goal of sending them to China. They have alleged ties to the Hong Kong-based logistics company prosecutors said was affiliated with Hsu.
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