Tom's Hardware reports a Brazilian distributor's RTX 5090 shipment worth about $470,000 vanished at São Paulo's airport
Nvidia RTX 5090 shipment worth $470,000 goes missing in Brazilian airport
Context
RTX 5090 cards have become scarce and valuable as Nvidia's chips go to AI work, and that value makes them targets for theft.
This is secondhand: Tom's Hardware is reporting on an Instagram post by the distributor Oderço. The company gave no arrival date or tracking details, and no authority has explained what happened.
Deep dive
On October 18, Tom's Hardware posted that an Nvidia RTX 5090 shipment worth $470,000 went missing at a Brazilian airport.
The article, by Jowi Morales, says the Brazilian electronics and IT distributor Oderço posted on Instagram after failing to get answers about the shipment. Oderço said it was expecting two pallets of Zotac RTX 5090 graphics cards at Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo, that they supposedly arrived and then disappeared, and that it had received no official response to its inquiries. The company said it had never faced anything like it in its 38 year history, and put the value at about R$2,500,000, its acquisition cost.
Tom's Hardware did not know how many cards were missing. Based on a Brazilian retail listing of R$33,999.99 for the card, it estimated at least 63, and likely many more, since the stated value is the purchase cost rather than the retail price.
The article notes that RTX 5090s are in short supply worldwide and disappeared from online retailers in mid September. It says there have been rumors Nvidia stopped production to focus on more expensive professional AI cards, which Nvidia denies, and that Micro Center lists the card as not carried. It also cites earlier thefts of high value graphics hardware, including a crew that rammed security escorts to hijack an AI hardware shipment.
What to expect next
Watch whether Brazilian airport authorities or the cargo handler explain what happened to the pallets, and whether any of the cards turn up for resale.
Also watch RTX 5090 supply and prices, since the shortage that makes these cards targets is tied to Nvidia directing chips to AI products. Shippers of high value AI hardware may add security as thefts like this one spread.