As tech billionaires make bank off an AI trade that now threatens retirement accounts and university endowments, a criminal element is rising to take advantage of the crumbs that fall off the table.
According to new reporting by NBC, truckfuls of equipment bound for data center construction sites are disappearing at a breakneck pace, representing tens of millions of dollars in losses for developers.
In one case, a trailer hauling server equipment bound for a hyperscale data center campus in Fayetteville, Georgia disappeared, after the unmarked police car escorting it was rammed by another driver. The trailer was found in a lot a few days later, with pallets containing $13 million worth of equipment nowhere to be found.
Another truckload bound for Texas went missing in a similar fashion, with a $10 million server rack vanishing after the escort vehicle was rammed and its GPS tracker manipulated by an unknown actor.
“The accident was not an accident,” private cargo theft investigator Gerardo Pachuca told NBC. “The bad guys wanted that load, so they intentionally took out the escorts.”
As various tech industry leaders and investigators told the publication, thefts of AI data center equipment in transit has resulted in over $100 million in losses since June of 2026 alone. Since last year, NBC identified some two dozen cargo thefts of components across the US, a number that’s expected to grow as the data center boom continues.
Keith Lewis, head of operations at risk-management firm Verisk CargoNet told NBC that it’s “like stealing pure gold bars.”
“We’ve seen some of these thefts go up into 30-plus million dollars for one particular shipment,” Lewis continued. “It’s so much easier to steal this than to rob a bank.”
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