Two Nvidia-branded trailers used by self-driving truck company PlusAI were stolen, but the haul was far less useful than the logos suggested. Each trailer carried 20,000 pounds of sand for a simulation, leaving the thieves with 40,000 pounds of silica instead of the expensive electronics they may have expected.
Wired reported that a PlusAI executive was alerted after an acquaintance spotted the trailers near their workplace. They were supposed to be outside a warehouse roughly half a mile away.
PlusAI partnered with Nvidia on autonomous vehicles, which explains the Nvidia branding on the trailers. The two trailers were part of a simulation and had been loaded with sand, then forcibly detached from their vehicles. Once the thieves discovered that the cargo was not valuable silicon but ordinary sand, they dumped it outside the acquaintance’s office.
PlusAI has recovered all 40,000 pounds of sand. The thieves had not been caught, leaving the Nvidia logos as a rather unfortunate advertisement for what was inside the trailers.
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