California tech exec arrested in US$300M Nvidia AI server smuggling case

NVIDIA (NVDA) proposed a $500B loan using GPUs as collateral, with lenders seeking bigger guarantees. NVDA shares rose 0.72% in premarket trading. NVIDIA pledged $10B to OpenAI's funding round, matching SoftBank's $10B. Michael Burry bought long-dated put options on NVDA, signaling a long-term downside bet. Analysts maintained positive outlooks, with Cantor Fitzgerald setting a $350 target and Bank of America naming NVDA a top semiconductor pick.

A California man was arrested for allegedly smuggling $300M worth of Nvidia AI servers to China via Malaysia and Singapore, bypassing U.S. export controls. The servers contained Nvidia H100 GPUs, purchased for $7.6M. Nvidia's stock closed at $230.86, up 0.27% in after-hours trading.

Nvidia (NVDA) increased its share repurchase authorization by $150 billion, the largest in history, with $235 billion remaining. The company expects to complete buybacks by fiscal 2028, coinciding with projected 70% revenue growth. Nvidia also launched the Open Agent Safety Platform to control autonomous AI agents, with over 100 organizations adopting the technology.

Amazon is discussing a plan with investors to purchase $8 billion worth of Nvidia Grace Blackwell AI chips, then lease them back. This would allow Amazon to remove the hardware costs from its balance sheet. Nvidia's chips are central to the proposed arrangement.

U.S. stocks closed higher on October 1, with optical communications and memory chip sectors leading gains. Coherent (COHR) rose 10.94%, while Nvidia (NVDA) announced a $235 billion buyback plan. The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 each gained 0.04%-0.19%. Semiconductor and AI-related stocks outperformed, while Chinese ADRs declined.

CScale, a Silicon Valley data center optical interconnect startup, launched after securing $145M in Series C funding. Investors include Nvidia and Intel Capital.