Super Micro Computer, the troubled hardware ally of Nvidia and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has finally hired a new head of finance. The appointment comes nearly two years after a board-level independent investigation led the company to commit to “immediately” begin searching for a replacement for longtime chief financial officer David Weigand.
Mark Long, 59, replaced Weigand as CFO on Wednesday—“effective immediately,” according to Supermicro—and he brings with him a stack of bona fides. He previously served as CFO and chief strategy officer at $130 billion data storage company Western Digital, and he runs an investment and advisory firm, Prime Impact Capital. Long also served a stint as co-CEO and CFO of a SPAC he co-founded that raised $300 million before it merged in 2023 with a Beijing-based auto insurance technology platform, Cheche Technology.
He joins Supermicro at an incredibly complex moment for the hardware maker with deep ties to Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang and Musk’s xAI, which was folded into SpaceX. Long’s record as a veteran executive and tech investor are likely intended to help clear the cloud that has hovered over Supermicro for the past two years and to burnish its credibility with skeptical investors.
In March, the Department of Justice and FBI indicted and arrested Supermicro co-founder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw in a shocking 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 Supermicro, was alleged to have gone to extreme lengths to deceive officials, including using hairdryers to remove and replace sticky labels and staging thousands of dummy servers that were non-working physical replicas of actual Supermicro servers—because the real servers 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 March arrest, however, kicked off another board-led internal investigation—separate from the previous probe that led to the CFO search—that Supermicro said in August found no evidence that current members of senior management knew about the smuggling scheme.
Until he resigned after being arrested and charged in the smuggling case, Liaw had served on the Supermicro board and had a long history with fellow co-founders Charles Liang and Sara Liu. (Liu and Liang are married and both serve on the Supermicro board.) Liaw had previously left Supermicro in the midst of an internal audit committee investigation just before a 2018 SEC probe charged Supermicro and its then-CFO with improper revenue recognition practices. Supermicro settled the SEC’s charges and paid a $17.5 million settlement in 2020. Liaw returned to Supermicro as a consultant in May 2021 and eventually became a full-time employee before rejoining the board in December 2023.
The prior probe, which led the company to commit to replacing Weigand with a more experienced CFO, was spurred by the abrupt resignation of auditor EY and investigated export controls and rehiring of employees who had resigned in 2017 after the earlier accounting investigation. As CFO and chief compliance officer, Weigand was held responsible for process lapses the investigation turned up, which included a consulting arrangement with the former CFO that EY wasn’t informed about, the company disclosed in 2024.
Since Liaw’s March 2026 arrest, Supermicro has since disclosed that it got hit with a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York related to both Liaw’s indictment and the company’s compliance program and internal controls. It also got subpoenas and inquiries from foreign authorities, the Securities & Exchange Commission, and the Bureau of Industry and Security, the national security and enforcement arms of the U.S. Department of Commerce that polices trade compliance and violations. In Liaw’s case, his lawyer informed the judge the documents Supermicro would give the government could be material to his defense, and his trial was pushed back from November 2026 to March 2027.
Since then, one of the workers who was indicted with Liaw and worked as a contractor for Supermicro, has pleaded guilty, according to court records in the case. 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 last count is new, according to Sun’s superseding information document, and shows that Sun pleaded guilty to a charge that he deleted 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’s facing a maximum of 20 years for the obstruction and conspiracy charges. Sun is also required to give up any of the proceeds from the export offenses. His lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment and it isn’t specified in his court records whether he has a cooperation agreement with the government.
As the new CFO, Long jumps headfirst into the fray. The board recently added Intel’s former IT CTO, Shesha Krishnapura, and another board member, Judy Lin, retired. Lin was previously vice president at Western Digital from 2007 to September 2012, leaving after Long began consulting for Western Digital in March 2012 before he officially joined the company as chief strategy officer in January 2013.
For the role, Long will get a base salary of $725,000 plus a signing bonus of $500,000 and a guaranteed annual cash bonus of $500,000. He’ll be eligible to get additional cash bonuses and an annual equity grant based on company performance and his individual achievement. As for equity, Long got an initial equity grant valued at about $4.1 million based on Thursday’s stock price, and options on 150,000 shares.
Supermicro declined to make Long available for interviews. In a statement CEO Charles Liang welcomed Long and thanked Weigand. Liang said Long would have “an immediate positive impact” in strengthening the company’s financial execution.
Weigand will stay to assist in the CFO transition. A Supermicro spokesperson said further details about his role would be shared at a later date.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com