Two trailers stolen from an autonomous trucking company in California were found abandoned after thieves discovered they contained 40,000 pounds of sand rather than valuable artificial intelligence equipment.
The trailers were taken overnight from PlusAI’s warehouse in Fremont last week. One carried Nvidia branding, although the company’s vehicles were not transporting Nvidia chips.
Employees noticed the trailers were missing the following morning. They were recovered later that day after a friend of PlusAI’s vice-president of legal spotted them parked outside an office in Newark and sent a photograph to the company.
Police told PlusAI that the thieves had forced open the rear doors, found nothing of value and left the vehicles behind. Each trailer was carrying about 20,000 pounds of sand.
PlusAI uses the material in research and development tests because its weight helps simulate the conditions of carrying real freight. Lauren Kwan, the company’s vice-president of marketing, said it was the first time since PlusAI was founded in 2016 that one of its tractors or trailers had been stolen.
AI cargo theft increasingly targets high-value equipment
The incident comes as cargo theft involving artificial intelligence equipment is reported to be increasing. In June, investigators in Illinois recovered two trailers near Chicago, one containing $300,000-worth of copper wire stolen from Alabama and $1 million-worth of data-centre equipment reported stolen in Florida.
More than $7 million-worth of Nvidia computer chips were stolen from a California warehouse in December 2024, shortly before they were due to be delivered to a facility in San Jose.
Supply-chain risk management firm Overhaul has tracked more than $150 million in losses involving AI equipment since it began collecting data. It said AI-related theft, including data-centre equipment and chips, had risen by 34 per cent since 2024, while the total value of goods stolen had increased by more than 110 per cent.
David Warrick, Overhaul’s executive vice-president, said the sharp increase in global spending on AI had created an attractive target for criminals seeking to resell memory chips and infrastructure on the black market.
He said organised crime groups had penetrated supply chains at several levels, including among drivers and warehouse operators, and looked for weaknesses that could be exploited.
Freight companies are seeking better ways to track trailers and cargo, but Kwan said there was not yet a standard solution across the industry. Overhaul uses artificial intelligence to verify driving licences and identify so-called ghost carriers posing as legitimate freight companies.
“We’re having to evolve not only with technology,” Warrick said, “but because we understand that this is an arms race.”
