By Jacob Adelman
Super Micro Computer founder Charles Liang used most of his keynote address this year at the Computex trade show in Taipei to promote his company's liquid-cooled server technology, which he described as opening a new frontier in Earth-friendly energy savings.
But before beginning that presentation -- and being joined onstage by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang -- Liang stopped to tell his audience about his philanthropic efforts that share "the same objective as Super Micro's green computing initiative."
At the Silicon Valley headquarters of his Green Earth Foundation, Liang said, researchers were propagating species of drought-resistant trees that could be planted by the tens of millions in one of the planet's most unforgiving environments -- the Sahara.
"It's my way to give back to our one and only Mother Earth," he told the crowd in a video posted on Super Micro's YouTube channel.
The Green Earth Foundation consists of two interlocking nonprofits that Liang and his wife, Super Micro co-founder Sara Liu, have run and supported with millions of dollars in company shares over more than a decade.
The couple probably qualified for hefty tax breaks in exchange for funding the groups' charitable work, which the Liangs have told the Internal Revenue Service includes supporting other nonprofits and conducting important forestry research to share with other experts.
Liang has also held up the foundation as a marker of Super Micro's commitment to the environment, a devotion also signaled by the green neckties once consistently worn by Super Micro executives.
But an investigation by Barron's found little evidence to show that the Liangs are fulfilling their stated philanthropic goals. The forestry work appears limited to 100 trees planted at the Presidio, a historic San Francisco military site.
Most of the groups' funding has gone to acquire pristine land in the San Francisco Bay Area: a picturesque but money-losing vineyard in the mountains above the city of Santa Cruz that the charities heavily subsidize, and a vast, rustic estate near Super Micro's San Jose office campus.
In response to a detailed list of questions for Liang and his family charities, a Super Micro representative sent an emailed statement to Barron's, asking that the remarks be attributed to a foundation spokesperson: "The mission of the Liangs' charitable work is to advance tree research, with a focus on resilient and drought-resistant tree species, including partnering with like-minded organizations studying trees in arid climates. Through local efforts and global partnerships, the work seeks to foster sustainable ecosystems and supports large-scale tree plantings."
Brian Mittendorf, a nonprofit accounting specialist at Ohio State University who examined some of the charities' recent tax returns at Barron's request, says the filings don't clearly show the groups' landholdings being deployed for an obvious charitable purpose.
"The big question is, where is the evidence that that's what it's being used for?" he says.
Liang's charities add to the questions around the executive and his company. Short seller Hindenburg Research published a report this past summer alleging "major corporate governance red flags" at Super Micro, including undisclosed related-party transactions with family members of insiders.
Super Micro's former financial auditor, Ernst & Young, resigned in October, saying it was unwilling to endorse the server maker's financial disclosures.
Liang has said the Hindenburg report "contains false or inaccurate statements." Super Micro appointed accounting firm BDO as its new auditor in November and recently said that a special committee of its board of directors found no evidence of fraud by management.
Super Micro shares were recently trading at $32, down from a high of nearly $119 in March, but up from $18 shortly after Ernst & Young's departure in the fall.
Super Micro became a publicly traded company in 2007, cementing its status as a scrappy challenger to established players like Hewlett Packard and Dell. That year, the Liangs established a new nonprofit called the Green Earth Charitable Organization.
Through December 2023, the most recent date for which records are publicly available, the Liangs contributed about $13 million to their nonprofit, mostly in the form of Super Micro stock.
Green Earth Charitable was set up as a private foundation, a class of nonprofit controlled and funded by a small group of donors. That differentiates them from public charities, which solicit widely for funding and whose boards must have some independence.
Green Earth Charitable told the IRS in its application for tax-exempt status that its "purpose and goal" would be to support such public charities, naming Greenpeace and the Red Cross as examples of potential beneficiaries.
Thanks to Super Micro's stock market success, Green Earth Charitable was able to cash in its shares to make about $19.7 million in contributions, with millions to spare. The gains wouldn't have been taxed, owing to the group's nonprofit status.
Very little of Green Earth Charitable's giving has gone to public charities like those that it told the IRS it would fund, according to tax records. Its chief beneficiary has been another private foundation led by the Liangs called Green Earth Liang's. Established in 2016, it has received $18.8 million from Green Earth Charitable.
For comparison, Green Earth Charitable's next biggest recipient is a local chapter of the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, a prominent Taiwan-based humanitarian organization. It received about $217,000. Greenpeace and the Red Cross received $29,000 and $128,000, respectively.
Green Earth Liang's said in its early paperwork with the IRS that its "mission, duty and purpose" would be to "research and develop ecologically and economically methods to promote reforestation and afforestation."
The group would "conduct research independently, with colleges, and with other nonprofit organizations," it said, and then "share the results of our research with any parties interested online, by phone, or by in person visits."
Green Earth Liang's has no known online presence, and the office number listed by the group on its tax returns is for the accountant that prepares the filings, Linda Leung. Leung said she didn't have the results of Green Earth's tree research.
The Fremont, Calif., address listed on the tax returns of Green Earth Liang's and Green Earth Charitable Organization is for a home in a gated residential community, not accessible for in-person visits.
Green Earth Liang's application to the IRS describes a research plan that involves growing trees from seeds and then weening the trees off irrigation over several years "until we are confident that they are able to thrive on their own."
It had already begun some forestry research, it said, on part of a vineyard property whose wine production was expected to help finance the group's work. Green Earth Liang's paid $2.5 million in 2017 for what had been known as the Zayante Vineyard, a storied 20-acre operation known as one of the few remaining Zinfandel growers in the Santa Cruz wine region.
Since then, the charity has spent roughly $1.7 million on "vineyard program expenses," nearly all of the $2 million it has declared in forestry research spending through October 2023, according to an analysis of its tax filings. Separately, the group invested about $1.4 million at the vineyard for unspecified development work, according to the analysis.
In the meantime, over the 2017 to 2023 period, Green Earth Liang's sole farm revenue has been $470,000 from selling grapes to other vintners. It produces no wine itself.
On a recent visit to the property, Barron's talked to a Green Earth Liang's contractor named Brian Chen, who was working among the vines alongside field crews. He is identified in the group's tax returns as providing research-and-development consulting services for the group.
Chen told Barron's that he functioned as a foreman for the vineyard, supervising the field workers who on that day were tending to the browning vines, after the harvest.
When asked about the forestry research taking place at the site, Chen motioned to a wooded area on the edge of the property but wouldn't allow Barron's to approach it, saying that he wasn't authorized to do so by the property's owners.
He said he knew nothing about the research, or who had conducted it, and had no knowledge of who owned the vineyard where he worked. He had not heard of the Liangs, he said.
Two contributions aligning with Green Earth's forestry mission were made to the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a Michigan-based nonprofit that collects clippings from old-growth trees so they can be cloned and replanted. Archangel used the funds, totaling $60,000, to support a planting project at the Presidio national park site in San Francisco in 2021.
About 100 redwood and sequoia saplings were planted at the time, according to the Presidio.
The effort was aided by a Carmel-based real estate agent named Tim Blake, who wrote on one of his multiple websites -- timblakeconsulting.com -- that he "brought together" the donation from the Liangs' charity to pay for the planting.
Lisa Petrie, public relations manager for the Presidio, says she remembers Blake being around during the 2021 planting but doesn't recall how he was involved.
She says she had had no further contact with him until one day early this month, when he called to tell her that he and his funders wanted to support another round of work at the site.
That call arrived just a few hours after Barron's sent Super Micro questions for this article.
Blake was also involved in one of Green Earth Liang's most significant ventures, its November 2022 purchase of the estate once known as Rancho Higuera, a 192-acre tract of rolling hills looming over the Silicon Valley suburb of Milpitas.
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December 20, 2024 03:30 ET (08:30 GMT)
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