Connecting the dots: Thanks to the unprecedented boom in AI server and data center projects, Nvidia's most powerful GPUs have become extremely hard to come by. If a story out of Brazil is accurate, specialized thieves may now be targeting these components at specific points during shipment.
Oderço Distribuidora is a Brazilian hardware distributor that has been in business for more than 38 years, about 18 of them importing computer hardware. According to a recent message from company president Oderço Matos, the company has lost an undisclosed number of GeForce RTX 5090 cards after two pallets went "missing" at São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport.
Matos said the company has never been through anything like this. Oderço was expecting to receive pallets full of Zotac GeForce RTX 5090 cards, worth R$2.5 million (around $470,000), but the goods never reached the company, and no one has offered an explanation so far.
The company now wants to understand what happened, and how a cargo of such valuable consumer electronics can disappear inside an international airport without leaving any trace. São Paulo/Guarulhos is the main airport serving the city of São Paulo, the largest in Brazil and, by most measures, in Latin America, and one of the 50 busiest in the world by passenger traffic.
He added that the company decided to go public after receiving no explanation from public authorities or the airport itself. There is also no video footage of the pallets being moved. Oderço is looking for "answers" about the disappearance, but also hopes whoever is responsible will eventually let the company get its GPUs back.
Airport officials are reportedly unwilling to cooperate, either with the press or with Oderço. Brazilian media have received no answer about the incident, while the Brazilian Federal Police and Federal Revenue Service have yet to issue an official statement.
Technically, no one has officially confirmed that the goods were stolen. Oderço, for its part, has not provided specific details or tracking information on the Zotac cards.
Although not designed to run in data centers or accelerate AI workloads, GeForce RTX 5090 cards are now among the most sought-after pieces of computer hardware ever. Individual GPUs are selling for thousands of dollars, and recent rumors claimed the model would soon disappear from the market. Nvidia has since said the RTX 5090 is still being manufactured, but the cards are now even more expensive than they were a few days ago. I guess thieves have taken note.