Super Micro soars on heavy call volume as management trumpets its work with Taiwan to avoid chip smuggling into China

Super Micro Computer shares surged Tuesday on heavy call option volume after management announced collaboration with Taiwanese authorities to prevent illegal chip smuggling into China, resulting in three arrests and the seizure of 50 servers. The company's statement aimed to distance itself from earlier U.S. charges against its co-founder for allegedly attempting to sell $2.5 billion in servers with Nvidia GPUs to China. The stock has fully recovered from those losses, with CEO Charles Liang saying he did not "feel a negative feeling" from customers despite the scandal.

Super Micro soars on heavy call volume as management trumpets its work with Taiwan to avoid chip smuggling into China Super Micro Computer https://robinhood.com/us/en/stocks/SMCI/?source=sherwood is spiking on elevated call demand amid the company’s push to show it’s part of the chip-smuggling solution, rather than the problem. Call volumes are running at 392,857 as of 12:16 p.m. ET, already well north of the 214,893 average over the past 20 sessions. The put/call ratio of 0.16 is also well below the 20-day average of 0.29, underscoring the bullish tilt in options. This morning, management put out a statement https://ir.supermicro.com/news/news-details/2026/Supermicro-Collaborates-with-Taiwanese-Authorities-to-Prevent-Illicit-Diversion-of-Server-Technology/default.aspx saying that the company had “worked closely with Taiwanese authorities” to help prevent its servers which contain Nvidia’s https://robinhood.com/us/en/stocks/NVDA/?source=sherwood AI chips from making their way into China in violation of export controls, and that this collaboration “resulted in the arrest of three suspects and the seizure of 50 servers that had been deceptively acquired after being sold by Supermicro to an authorized reseller.” The company also aimed to emphasize that none of this was its fault. “This case highlights the challenges that can arise when products are resold through multiple downstream parties beyond direct manufacturer control,” per the statement. Back in March, Super Micro’s cofounder was among those charged by US prosecutors https://sherwood.news/markets/super-micro-dives-co-founder-charged-with-allegedly-smuggling-ai-chips-china/ for allegedly attempting to sell $2.5 billion in servers with Nvidia GPUs to China. The stock had swooned on the news and lifted fellow server companies https://sherwood.news/markets/chip-smuggling-charges-against-super-micro-cofounder-boost-rival-server/ that weren’t tainted by this association. One analyst even suggested that Super Micro lost a billion-dollar contract https://sherwood.news/markets/super-micro-craters-on-report-that-oracle-canceled-a-usd1-billion-contract/ with Oracle in part because of these allegations. Shares have since recovered all those losses, and then some. On the conference call following Super Micro’s big Q3 earnings beat https://sherwood.news/markets/super-micro-q3-earnings-report-ai-boom-servers-scandal/ , CEO Charles Liang said he didn’t “feel a negative feeling” from customers at the time despite these charges. CFO David Weigand added that the company also hasn’t seen a decrease in its allocation of chips from Nvidia in the wake of this news.