Two trailers stamped with Nvidia's logo vanished from a parking lot this week. Thieves got away with 40,000 pounds of sand.
The trailers belonged to PlusAI, an autonomous-trucking startup that partners with Nvidia on self-driving systems. The truck cabs, likely loaded with real hardware, stayed locked inside PlusAI's warehouse, but the trailers sat outside secured only with hand locks. Someone took the bait anyway, only to find each trailer packed with 20,000 pounds of ballast sand, the standard filler PlusAI uses to simulate cargo weight during road tests. The theft surfaced only after a PlusAI executive got a tip from an acquaintance who'd spotted the "trucks" half a mile from the warehouse, prompting a call to police.
This isn't an isolated incident. The AI buildout has turned GPUs, RAM, and even copper cable into targets, with one recent heist netting $1.3 million in cable and other cases involving thieves shoving security escorts off the road to grab a truckload of chips. What's notable here is that the thieves went after branding, not confirmed cargo. Slapping a partner's logo on your fleet reads as a target now, whether or not anything valuable is inside.
PlusAI gets a good story out of this. The would-be thieves get to explain to their fence why the truck is full of dirt.