A skulk of thieves stole two trailers branded with Nvidia logos, presumably with the intent of scoring some lucrative enterprise-grade hardware. However, upon cracking open their ill-gotten goods, they quickly abandoned their heist after discovering they’d only seized 40,000lb of sand.
The disappointing payload was taken from PlusAI, a company working in partnership with Nvidia in the development of autonomous driving vehicles. The thieves managed to attach their own truck cabs to two of the trailers, but the crime went undetected by the firm for some time. Eventually, reports tech magazine and website Wired, an acquaintance of a top executive at PlusAI inadvertently spotted the containers half a mile away, and sent a text saying, “Just saw two of your trucks near my work place! :)”
In the space of several hours, the Fremont Police Department had secured the trailers, each containing 20 tonnes of sand. However, at the time of writing, no arrests have been made in connection to the theft and the investigation remains ongoing.
Without sand, we have no silicon. With no silicon, we have no consumer electronics. That includes our consumer GeForce RTX series graphics cards, but more importantly the enormously expensive enterprise hardware upon which Nvidia has built its empire, becoming the most-valued company in the world in doing so.
While the GeForce RTX 5090 continues to grow more expensive by the day, surpassing $5,090 in some cases, that’s nothing compared to Nvidia’s enterprise cards. For example, a lone Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Server Edition commands the princely sum of ~$20,000, naturally making them enticing targets for criminals.
Given that the RAM crisis shows no signs of slowing, keeping component prices high across consumer and enterprise markets. Here’s hoping Anakin Skywalker wasn’t among this cohort, as that would be a truly coarse, rough day.
For more graphics card chatter, check out our picks of the best GPUs on the market.
