Recent reports in the media wron­gly alle­ged that bad actors had inser­ted a mali­cious chip or other hard­ware on our pro­ducts during our manu­fac­tu­ring process.

Becau­se the secu­ri­ty and inte­gri­ty of our pro­ducts is our hig­hest prio­ri­ty, we under­took a tho­rough inves­ti­ga­ti­on with the assis­tance of a lea­ding, third-par­ty inves­ti­ga­ti­ons firm. A repre­sen­ta­ti­ve sam­ple of our mother­boards was tes­ted, inclu­ding the spe­ci­fic type of mother­board depic­ted in the artic­le and mother­boards purcha­sed by com­pa­nies refe­ren­ced in the artic­le, as well as more recent­ly manu­fac­tu­red motherboards.

Today, we want to share with you the results of this test­ing: After tho­rough exami­na­ti­on and a ran­ge of func­tion­al tests, the inves­ti­ga­ti­ons firm found abso­lut­e­ly no evi­dence of mali­cious hard­ware on our motherboards.

The­se fin­dings were no sur­pri­se to us. As we have sta­ted repea­ted­ly, our pro­cess is desi­gned to pro­tect the inte­gri­ty and relia­bi­li­ty of our pro­ducts. Among other safeguards:

• We test our pro­ducts at every step of the manu­fac­tu­ring pro­cess. We test every lay­er of every board we manu­fac­tu­re throug­hout the process.
• We requi­re that Super­mi­cro employees be onsite with our assem­bly con­trac­tors, whe­re we con­duct mul­ti­ple inspec­tions, inclu­ding auto­ma­ted opti­cal, visu­al, elec­tri­cal, and func­tion­al tests.
• The com­ple­xi­ty of our mother­board design ser­ves as an addi­tio­nal safe­guard. Throug­hout our sup­p­ly chain, each of our boards is tes­ted repea­ted­ly against its design to detect any aberra­ti­on and to reject any board that does not match its design.
• To guard against tam­pe­ring, no sin­gle employee, team, or con­trac­tor has unrest­ric­ted access to our com­ple­te board design.
• We regu­lar­ly audit our con­trac­tors for pro­cess, qua­li­ty, and controls.

We app­re­cia­te the indus­try sup­port regar­ding this mat­ter from many of our cus­to­mers, like Apple and AWS. We are also gra­teful for num­e­rous seni­or govern­ment offi­ci­als, inclu­ding repre­sen­ta­ti­ves of the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, the Direc­tor of Natio­nal Intel­li­gence, and the Direc­tor of the FBI, who ear­ly on appro­pria­te­ly ques­tio­ned the truth of the media reports.

As we have sta­ted repea­ted­ly sin­ce the­se alle­ga­ti­ons were repor­ted, no govern­ment agen­cy has ever infor­med us that it has found mali­cious hard­ware on our pro­ducts; no cus­to­mer has ever infor­med us that it found mali­cious hard­ware on our pro­ducts; and we have never seen any evi­dence of mali­cious hard­ware on our products.

Today’s announce­ment should lay to rest the unwar­ran­ted accu­sa­ti­ons made about Supermicro’s mother­boards. We know that many of you are also addres­sing the­se issues with your own cus­to­mers. To assist in tho­se con­ver­sa­ti­ons, we have pre­pared a short video that high­lights our qua­li­ty assu­rance process.

We app­re­cia­te your pati­ence as we have dili­gent­ly con­duc­ted a tho­rough inves­ti­ga­ti­on into the reports. We are tru­ly proud of the secu­ri­ty, inte­gri­ty, and qua­li­ty of our pro­ducts. And we are proud to stand by our pro­ducts. Plea­se cont­act our team if you have any questions.

Sin­ce­re­ly,
Charles Liang
Pre­si­dent & CEO

David Weig­and
SVP and Chief Com­pli­ance Officer

Raju Pen­umat­cha
SVP and Chief Pro­duct Officer