Thieves Steal Two Nvidia-Branded Trailers, Find 20 Tons of Sand Inside

On Thursday morning, an executive at PlusAI — a company building self-driving trucks — got a strange text from a friend: "Just saw two of your trucks near my workplace!" That was odd, because the company's trailers were supposed to be docked outside its warehouse in Newark, California, half a mile away. Someone had broken the hand locks, hooked their own truck cabs to the trailers, and driven off. The trailers were covered in logos for PlusAI and Nvidia, the most valuable company in the world. The two companies work together on AI software for autonomous trucks.

But here's the twist: the trailers were packed with about 20,000 pounds of sand each. PlusAI uses these heavy "simulated loads" to test how its self-driving trucks handle real-world weight without risking actual cargo. So the thieves hauled away 40,000 pounds of essentially nothing. Police responded quickly, and by Thursday afternoon the trailers were back with PlusAI — sand fully intact. PlusAI's high-tech truck cabs, where drivers normally sit, were parked safely inside the warehouse and never taken.

Why did the thieves bother? The Nvidia name is a giant magnet right now. The company's AI chips power the data centers behind tools like ChatGPT, and they're extremely expensive and hard to get. This year, thieves have targeted shipments of data center equipment, Tesla batteries, and bitcoin mining machines. In some cases, they've even rammed the security vehicles that escort valuable tech loads. According to cargo-theft analysts at Verisk CargoNet, metals and enterprise computer equipment are among the most commonly stolen goods in the US.

This story has a happy ending. The sand trailers were recovered the same day, and no one got rich. But the incident is a small, funny window into a bigger trend: as AI hardware becomes more valuable than gold by weight, criminals are paying attention — and sometimes grabbing the wrong thing entirely. The case remains under investigation.