The freight thieves might have been looking for the precious AI "spoils," but after stealing two trailers from an autonomous truck company, what they got was a completely different kind of "cargo": sand, and a lot of it at that.

Truck company PlusAI confirmed that last week, two trailers from its warehouse in Fremont, California, were stolen, one of which had a NVIDIA brand logo. Although PlusAI uses NVIDIA chips in its autonomous driving technology, these trailers did not contain any chips; instead, they were loaded with 40,000 pounds of sand.

The theft occurred at night: the next morning, employees discovered that the trailers were missing. Later that same day, the police found the trailers, as a friend of the PlusAI Vice President of Legal Affairs happened to see them parked outside an office in Newark and sent a photo. The authorities informed the company that the thieves had pried open the back of the vehicles, but after finding nothing of value, they simply abandoned them.

PlusAI Sand is used to simulate the load that trailers must carry during research and development testing, as transporting this material can better mimic real freight conditions. Each truck is loaded with approximately 20,000 pounds of sand.

PlusAI, the Vice President of Marketing, told Fortune that since the company's establishment in 2016, there has never been a theft of tractors or trailers: "This is the first time." NVIDIA declined Fortune's request for comment.

AI Related goods theft has increased.

Although this is the first time for PlusAI, the incidence of cargo theft targeting AI's company is on the rise. In June of this year, investigators from the Cook County Sheriff's Office in Illinois found two trailers outside Chicago; one contained 300,000 dollars' worth of copper wire stolen from Alabama, and the other contained data center equipment reported stolen in Florida, valued at 1 million dollars. In December 2024, thieves stole NVIDIA computer chips worth over 7 million dollars from a warehouse in California, which were scheduled to be delivered to a Supermicro factory in San Jose just a day later.

Supply chain risk management company Overhaul stated that since they began tracking relevant data, they have recorded over $150 million in damages to AI equipment; since 2024, there has been a 34% increase in AI related thefts, including of data center equipment and chips. During the same period, the total value of stolen goods has increased by more than 110%.

Cargo theft has existed for hundreds of years, but according to David Warrick, the Executive Vice President of Overhaul, with global AI expenditures expected to reach 2.7 trillion dollars this year by some estimates, thieves have found a new target: hijacking AI-related goods and reselling them on the black market, taking advantage of the strong demand for memory chips and infrastructure construction. As a result, technology and freight companies are facing supply chain disruptions, while thieves are making a fortune.

Warrick said to Fortune earlier this year, "From the perspective of criminal opportunists, the economic logic has become absolutely crazy. As trillions of dollars are invested around the world and everyone is spending a lot of money, criminals would think, 'This is a great opportunity; you should get involved too.' That's just the way it works."

Combating cargo theft

The scale of these thefts – targeting equipment worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars from commercial trailers – indicates that this is not just petty theft, but organized crime. As the Trump administration took action to ban the export of certain AI technologies, organized criminals saw an opportunity to smuggle these products to sanctioned countries such as China and Russia and sell them on the black market. According to research institution Epoch AI, by the end of 2025, smuggling involved 290,000 to 1.6 million NVIDIA H100 equivalent chips, which accounts for about one-third of China's total computing power inventory. However, the institution did not attribute these smuggled chips to cargo theft.

Warrick said, "When we talk about organized crime, we are referring to organized crime. These are international criminal groups. They operate like large corporations... They have penetrated every level of the supply chain, including drivers and warehouse operators. They know where all the high-value goods are, who is handling these goods, and they look for weak links in the supply chain to exploit."

Freight companies are trying to address this increasingly serious issue. Although PlusAI is a software company that develops autonomous driving technology, Kwan indicates that cargo theft has always been a long-standing problem in the trucking industry, and the industry is seeking better solutions to track the status of trailers and goods.

"But there is currently no unified industry-level solution," she said.

Overhaul relies on AI to verify driver's licenses, as theft often masquerades as "phantom carriers" – they appear to be legitimate freight operators but are actually smugglers. The company possesses over 30 billion data points, with an additional 250 million added each month, and uses AI to track the goods.

Warrick said, "We must not only evolve with technology," he said, "but also because we understand that this is a arms race."