Two pallets of RTX 5090 cards vanish at São Paulo airport

Nvidia's flagship graphics card is hard enough to buy in a store. In Brazil, a whole shipment has apparently disappeared before reaching one. Oderço, a technology distributor based in Maringá, in the state of Paraná, says two pallets of Zotac GeForce RTX 5090 cards arrived at São Paulo–Guarulhos International Airport and were then never located, as Maringá news site GMC Online reports.

What the distributor says

The company puts the value of the cargo at about R$2.5 million at cost, roughly half a million US dollars. The retail value would be higher: RTX 5090 models sell for around R$33,000–39,000 each in Brazilian shops, according to local reports.

Company president Oderço Matos went public in a video on the distributor's social media channels on Friday. He says Oderço has imported goods since 2008 and, in more than 38 years in business, has never lost a shipment before. "Two pallets don't disappear on their own inside an international airport," he said, adding that the company had asked for explanations and received no answers. According to reports, he also complained that there was no camera footage of what happened.

What we don't know

A lot. The company has not said when exactly the cargo arrived, at which point in the handling chain it went missing, or whom it contacted. By Saturday, airport operator GRU Airport, Brazil's customs service (Receita Federal) and the Federal Police had not commented publicly, and neither Zotac nor Nvidia had said anything. So far the only account is the distributor's own, and theft has not been confirmed.

The timing is notable. The RTX 5090 is in high demand from gamers and from people running AI models locally, and it went missing from Nvidia's own store this week, which sparked rumours that it was being discontinued. Nvidia denied those reports. If you are shopping for a high-end GPU, our guide on how much RAM you need and our gaming monitor guide can help you build a balanced system around it.

We will update this story if the cargo is found or the authorities comment.