A Brazilian distributor says two pallets of Zotac RTX 5090 graphics cards, worth about $470,000, reached São Paulo's main airport and then disappeared.
The company, Oderço, described the problem in an Instagram post. It said the shipment was expected at Guarulhos International Airport, that it supposedly arrived, and that official channels have not answered its inquiries. Oderço put the value at R$2,500,000 and said that in its 38-year history it has never dealt with anything like this. It has not published an arrival date or tracking numbers, so the timeline is unclear.
The card count is not stated either, but the figures allow a rough estimate. A Brazilian online retailer lists the Zotac RTX 5090 at R$33,999.99, and R$2,500,000 divided by that price gives about 73 cards. Because the R$2,500,000 is what Oderço paid rather than what the cards sell for, the true number is probably higher.
The loss lands in the middle of a shortage. The RTX 5090 dropped out of online retailers' stock in mid-September, and Micro Center's online store marks it "not carried". Rumors say Nvidia has stopped making the card to focus on pricier professional AI hardware, though Nvidia insists otherwise. In the US, a Zotac RTX 5090 currently sells for around $8,000 on Amazon.
High-value GPU cargo has been a target before. One crew rammed security escorts to hijack an AI hardware shipment, and another group took two trailers marked with the Nvidia logo, only to find sand inside.
Neither Zotac, the airport operator nor the carriers involved are quoted in the available account of this story, so none has commented. Nothing in it shows theft rather than a logistics or customs error. What is established so far is a distributor's claim and silence from the parties it asked.