Thieves took two Nvidia- and PlusAI-branded trailers from outside an autonomous-truck developer’s California warehouse, apparently expecting valuable technology. Instead, police recovered trailers containing a combined 40,000 pounds of sand used to simulate cargo during research and development.
The thieves attached their own cabs, broke the trailers’ hand locks and drove them away. PlusAI discovered the theft after an acquaintance told an executive that the trucks had appeared near an office in Newark, California, even though the company believed they were still parked at its Fremont facility. The company’s technology-equipped tractor cabs remained inside the warehouse and were not taken. No arrests had been made when the recovery was announced.
The unusual outcome sits within a more serious supply-chain problem. Criminals have increasingly targeted chips, networking equipment, batteries and other high-value hardware moving to data centers. Some recent California thefts involved attacks on vehicles escorting technology shipments worth millions of dollars. This load was only test ballast, but the logos were enough to make ordinary trailers look like a valuable part of the AI hardware pipeline.