Six pallets of Nvidia cargo worth $11.4 million left Oakland on Aug. 29, bound for Fort Worth, Texas, and then dropped off the map on the way south. Oakland police are investigating. No arrests have been announced.
The theft was not reported until early September, according to The Mercury News. Authorities told the paper the truck and its drivers disappeared while heading south. Police tried to trace the vehicle, followed it through several multi-hour stops, and lost track of it in San Bernardino County.
As Planned, Then Off the Grid
Nvidia makes computer chips and other hardware. The report does not say which products, or which chip models, were on these six pallets. It does say the handoff matched the paperwork: a truck bearing a food transportation company's logo picked up the load in Oakland, as planned.
Authorities have characterized the thieves as apparently sophisticated. The same account does not identify a fraud technique or explain how the pickup was arranged. A logo on the truck is not evidence that the food company took part, that anyone stole its identity, or that a dispatch system was hacked.
What the calendar does show is a lag. The freight left Aug. 29. The loss surfaced in early September. Eleven-plus million dollars in computing hardware can depart looking like a routine haul and stay missing for days before the alarm.
Earlier Nvidia Burglaries, a Separate File
The Mercury News report also notes that this is not the first time Nvidia cargo has been targeted in the Bay Area. In 2025, Fremont and Union City police investigated burglaries of Nvidia shipments that added up to more than $7.5 million. Police believed some of the suspects' vehicles had been obtained in Southern California and that the group traveled to the Bay Area for those burglaries.
That belief is about the 2025 cases. It does not identify who took the August pallets, and it does not merge those burglaries with a September trailer theft in Fremont.
In Fremont, the Name Came With Sand
That September case belongs to PlusAI, a Santa Clara autonomous-trucking company, and to a Fremont warehouse used for testing. Hoodline reported that workers found two trailers gone on a Thursday morning, that Fremont police received the report just after 9:30 a.m., and that the trailer locks appeared forced off. The company's cabs, parked elsewhere on the property, were left untouched.
The San Francisco Standard placed the theft late on Wednesday, Sept. 23, and the discovery on Sept. 24. A friend texted a company legal executive a photo of the trailers near an office in Newark, and the company alerted police. FreightWaves reported that Newark officers returned both trailers with all 40,000 pounds of sand still inside. The sand was a simulated freight load, used to test handling and braking.
One trailer carried PlusAI and Nvidia branding, marketing executive Lauren Kwan confirmed. She told the Standard she thought the branding had drawn the thieves. That is her assessment, not an established motive. She also recounted a police view that the trailer backs had been opened before the rigs were abandoned. Nothing in these accounts connects that crew to the Oakland shipment. The contrast is still hard to miss: in Fremont, an Nvidia name rode on trailers full of sand, and the sand came back. The Oakland pallets were Nvidia cargo, and the Nov. 4 account does not report them recovered.
Fewer Thefts, Much Larger Losses
The dollar figure fits a wider pattern that predates this load. Verisk CargoNet, in an analysis released Aug. 6, documented 677 supply-chain theft incidents across the United States and Canada in the second quarter of 2026, 26% fewer than the same quarter of 2025. Estimated losses moved the other way, from $135.7 million to $304.6 million. CargoNet noted that enterprise computing shipments can be worth millions while moving as ordinary dry freight. Those are second-quarter industry totals, compiled before the Aug. 29 Oakland pickup. They are not a local count, and they do not identify what was on the six pallets.
The FBI uses the term strategic cargo theft for deception that induces a shipper or carrier to hand over freight, including fictitious pickups and misuse of a carrier's identity. An April 30 advisory from the bureau's Internet Crime Complaint Center warns that criminals can compromise carrier accounts, impersonate businesses and redirect legitimate shipments. Neither document classifies the Oakland disappearance. The attached advice is narrower than a theory of this case: confirm driver identities and truck and trailer identifiers at pickup, use a secure pickup number, and verify the pickup through a second channel instead of trusting a familiar business name alone.
On the public record, via Wednesday's Mercury News report, Oakland police have a southbound truck last traced in San Bernardino County, a load that was supposed to reach Fort Worth, and no announced arrests.
