Supermicro Appoints Mark Long as CFO After Two-Year Search

Super Micro Computer has hired Mark Long as its new chief financial officer, ending a nearly two-year search that began after an independent board investigation prompted the company to replace its longtime finance chief. Long, 59, stepped into the role on Wednesday, effective immediately, according to the company.

The appointment comes at a critical moment for the hardware maker, which has deep ties to Nvidia and Elon Musk's SpaceX. Long brings extensive experience to the position, having previously served as CFO and chief strategy officer at Western Digital, a data storage company valued at $130 billion. He also runs an investment and advisory firm, Prime Impact Capital, and co-founded a SPAC that raised $300 million before merging in 2023 with Cheche Technology, a Beijing-based auto insurance technology platform.

Long replaces David Weigand, who had served as CFO and chief compliance officer. The board committed to finding a replacement in December 2024 after an independent investigation identified process lapses for which Weigand was held responsible. Those lapses included a consulting arrangement with a former CFO that the company's auditor, EY, had not been informed about. EY abruptly resigned, spurring the probe, which also examined export controls and the rehiring of employees who had resigned in 2017 following an earlier accounting investigation.

Since then, Supermicro has been engulfed in a far more serious legal battle. In March 2026, the Department of Justice and FBI indicted and arrested co-founder Yih-Shyan «Wally» Liaw in a smuggling case allegedly involving $2.5 billion of Supermicro hardware loaded with Nvidia's export-controlled chips being illegally routed to China. Liaw, along with two others associated with the company, was accused of using extreme measures to deceive officials, including using hairdryers to remove and replace sticky labels and staging thousands of dummy servers that were non-working replicas of actual Supermicro servers because the real ones had already been diverted to China.

Supermicro is not named as a defendant in the case and has said it is cooperating with law enforcement. Liaw has pleaded not guilty. His arrest triggered a second board-led internal investigation, separate from the earlier probe, which the company said in August found no evidence that current senior management knew about the smuggling scheme. Until his resignation following the arrest, Liaw had served on the Supermicro board and had a long history with fellow co-founders Charles Liang and Sara Liu, who are married and both serve on the board.

The legal pressure has only intensified. Since Liaw's arrest, Supermicro has disclosed that it received a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York related to both the indictment and the company's compliance program and internal controls. It has also received subpoenas and inquiries from foreign authorities, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Bureau of Industry and Security, the enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce that polices trade compliance.

In Liaw's case, his lawyer informed the judge that documents Supermicro would provide to the government could be material to his defense, and his trial was pushed back from November 2026 to March 2027. One of the workers indicted alongside Liaw, Ting-Wei «Willy» Sun, pleaded guilty last week to four counts, including conspiracy to smuggle goods and violate export rules and obstruction of justice. The obstruction count is new, according to Sun's superseding information document, and shows he admitted to deleting an encrypted messaging app on his phone on March 19, 2026, the day of the arrests. His sentencing is set for September 2027, and he faces a maximum of 20 years for the obstruction and conspiracy charges. Sun is also required to forfeit any proceeds from the export offenses.

Long joins Supermicro as it seeks to rebuild credibility with skeptical investors. The board recently added Shesha Krishnapura, Intel's former IT CTO, while board member Judy Lin retired. Lin had previously served as vice president at Western Digital from 2007 to September 2012, leaving after Long began consulting for the company in March 2012 and before he officially joined as chief strategy officer in January 2013.

For his role, Long will receive a base salary of $725,000, a signing bonus of $500,000, and a guaranteed annual cash bonus of $500,000. He will also be eligible for additional cash bonuses and an annual equity grant based on company performance.

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Delaney Sawyer

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Delaney Sawyer covers public affairs, politics, business, culture and daily news for Core Memo. The role focuses on verification, context, and clear explanations for readers.

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