Thieves on the Hunt for GPUs Stole Nvidia Trucks, but All They Got Was 20 Tons of Sand
It's no secret that GPUs are worth their weight in gold right now, with the ongoing RAM crisis shooting prices through the stratosphere. That's probably what some thieves were thinking too, as they stole two Nvidia-branded trailers thinking they were getting a load of expensive GPUs. But they just ended up with sand.
According to Wired, the thieves stole two trailers branded with Nvidia and PlusAI's logos in Newark, California last week, but rather than expensive hardware, they were loaded up with 20,000 pounds of sand each. That's a weird thing for a tech company to be loading a trailer with, but Nvidia and PlusAI have been teaming up to test autonomous trucks, and the trailers full of sand were being used to simulate loads.
PlusAI was notified that the sand was missing when an executive got a text message from a friend, who had seen the trailers parked outside of their Newark-based office. PlusAI was then able to recover the trailers, and all the sand within, as it seems the thieves abandoned them. No arrests have been made.
The most expensive part of the setup – the tech-equipped trucks themselves – were parked inside the warehouse, and were left alone.
As AI hardware has continued to go up in price to fuel data center growth, these thefts have grown more popular, according to a report about Q2 2026 theft risk from Verisk CargoNet: "Organized groups also continued targeting enterprise-grade computer and networking equipment, components and cryptocurrency mining hardware. These shipments may be worth several million dollars but frequently move through the supply chain as conventional dry freight, creating a significant mismatch between their financial value and their ordinary transportation and security profile."
These thefts probably aren't helping with the cost of hardware. RAM prices have continued to climb since the start of 2026, and Nvidia graphics cards specifically have had massive price jumps this year. Plus, it doesn't seem likely that Nvidia will be releasing new graphics cards any time soon, either.