In what may be the most ironic cargo heist of the year, thieves in Fremont, California made off with two truck trailers bearing Nvidia and PlusAI logos — only to discover they'd stolen 20 tons of sand.
On Thursday morning, a top PlusAI executive received a congratulatory text from an acquaintance who had spotted two of the company's trucks near their workplace in Newark, California. The trailers weren't supposed to be there. They were last known to be docked outside PlusAI's warehouse, half a mile away.
Police arrived to help recover the trailers, and PlusAI employees revealed why the thieves had likely abandoned them: each trailer was filled with approximately 20,000 pounds of sand, used as simulated loads for autonomous truck R&D testing. Both trailers were recovered with all 40,000 pounds of sand intact.
The tech-enabled truck cabs — the valuable part containing the autonomous driving systems — had been parked inside PlusAI's warehouse and were not taken. The trailers had been secured with hand locks, which were broken to gain access.
The theft comes amid a surge in cargo theft targeting high-tech and semiconductor-related equipment. In August, WIRED reported two California incidents in which thieves deliberately struck security escort vehicles carrying high-value data center equipment, then drove the trucks away. Millions of dollars of equipment from those incidents remain unrecovered. This year, thieves have also targeted Tesla batteries and bitcoin mining machines.
Fremont police say the case is under investigation and no arrests have been made. Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment.
