MSI fervently denies RTX 5090 sales in China after pallets of illicit GPUs spotted in the country — company says it has identified ‘unauthorized distribution unrelated to our sales policy’

MSI has issued a statement clarifying that it does not sell Nvidia’s RTX 5090 GPU, following a spate of rumors and a photograph circulating online depicting hundreds of MSI-branded cards at an unspecified location in the country.

Three days ago, a user on Reddit posted an image showing unattended pallets of RTX 5090 GPUs lying in a street in China. This prompted online chatter pertaining to a lack of enforcement for export controls, as the RTX 5090 is one of many high-end cards that are banned from export to China. Aware of the PR connotations of getting caught, or even accused, of dealing the GPUs in the region, MSI was quick to issue a rebuttal.

In a new statement posted on its site, the company has clarified that it had nothing to do with the RTX 5090 shipments spotted in China, and claims the global serial number tracking has confirmed they are parallel imports — when a genuine product is imported through questionable means, without the explicit permission of the parent company.

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Dealers skirting export controls on high-demand GPUs remains a headache for Washington. Just recently, a Singaporean company was accused of helping smuggle $2 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs into the country. We’ve known for a while now that underground markets exist in the region, where cards are regularly modded with increased VRAM to make them better for AI applications.

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