Thieves Stole NVIDIA Semis in Fremont Hunting for Scarce GPUs — Then Got a Brutal Surprise

In Fremont, California, a crew of sophisticated thieves apparently thought they had pulled off the score of a lifetime. They tracked down and stole several huge, NVIDIA-branded tractor-trailers from a warehouse.

For anyone who doesn't follow the tech world, NVIDIA graphics cards are worth a fortune right now thanks to the artificial intelligence boom. Stealing an entire truckload of them sounds like hitting the lottery and securing a comfortable life on a tropical island.

The thieves were presumably already counting their millions as they broke into the trailers. Instead of boxes packed with cutting-edge chips, they found roughly 44,000 pounds of ordinary construction sand.

There was a very good reason for that.

NVIDIA and autonomous-driving company PlusAI were using the trucks to test self-driving technology. To properly train and evaluate an AI driver, the semis needed to behave like fully loaded trucks, including when braking and taking corners under real-world road conditions.

Nobody was about to fill experimental vehicles with millions of dollars' worth of electronics just to add weight. Sand was a much cheaper solution.

The bizarre crime was eventually discovered thanks to a combination of luck and the thieves' own carelessness.

A PlusAI vice president was casually drinking coffee when a friend sent him a message: “Oh, congrats on the expansion! I just saw two of your branded trucks right outside my office!”

The executive immediately realized something was wrong. The trucks were supposed to be sitting inside a secured parking facility at the time.

By the time police arrived, the thieves were long gone.

Apparently, the crew had broken into the trailers, discovered that their supposed jackpot of high-tech silicon was actually silicon dioxide — essentially sand — and completely lost interest.

Instead of trying to make off with anything valuable from the truck cabs, they simply abandoned the semis in the middle of the street and fled.

It's hard to imagine a more expensive-looking heist ending with a load of dirt.

This may be the rare case where artificial intelligence beat natural intelligence without even turning on a processor.