Supermicro Hires Western Digital Veteran Mark Long as CFO

Supermicro is paying its new CFO a base salary of $725,000 — and handing Mark Long one of the hardest jobs in tech finance. Nearly two years after a board-ordered probe forced the company to promise it would "immediately" find a replacement for David Weigand, Long took over on Wednesday, "effective immediately," Supermicro said.

Long, 59, arrives with a heavyweight résumé. He served as CFO and chief strategy officer at Western Digital, the $130 billion data storage company, and now runs the investment and advisory firm Prime Impact Capital. He also co-founded a SPAC that raised $300 million and merged with Beijing-based auto insurance platform Cheche Technology in 2023.

The plain takeaway: a seasoned operator now sits atop the finances of a company still fighting for investor trust.

Why did the CFO search take almost two years?

The clock started in 2024. An independent board investigation, spurred by the abrupt resignation of auditor EY, examined export controls and the rehiring of employees who had resigned in 2017 after an earlier accounting probe. That investigation held Weigand, who was CFO and chief compliance officer, responsible for process lapses — including a consulting arrangement with a former CFO that EY never learned about, as the company disclosed in 2024.

Then the situation got worse. In March 2026, the Justice Department and FBI arrested Supermicro co-founder Yih-Shyan "Wally" Liaw in a smuggling case involving $2.5 billion in Supermicro hardware loaded with Nvidia's export-controlled chips and allegedly routed illegally to China. Prosecutors say Liaw and two associates went to extreme lengths to deceive officials — using hairdryers to peel off and replace sticky labels and staging thousands of non-working dummy servers while the real machines had already been shipped to China.

Supermicro is not a defendant and says it is cooperating. Liaw has pleaded not guilty.

What has happened since the arrest?

Plenty. A second, separate board investigation concluded in August and found no evidence that current senior management knew about the smuggling scheme, the company said.

But the legal pressure keeps building. Supermicro disclosed it received a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York tied to Liaw's indictment and its own compliance program. It also fielded subpoenas and inquiries from foreign authorities, the SEC, and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security. Liaw's trial was pushed from November 2026 to March 2027 after his lawyer told the judge that Supermicro's documents could be material to the defense.

One co-defendant has already flipped. Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun, a Supermicro contractor, pleaded guilty last week to four counts, including conspiracy to smuggle goods and violate export rules and obstruction of justice. Court records show Sun admitted deleting an encrypted messaging app from his phone on March 19, 2026 — the day of the arrests. He faces up to 20 years and is scheduled for sentencing in September 2027. His lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.

That's a guilty plea inside the alleged scheme, and it's the strongest signal yet of how serious the government's case is.

How much is Supermicro paying Long?

The package, per the company:

• Base salary: $725,000
• Signing bonus: $500,000
• Guaranteed annual cash bonus: $500,000
• Initial equity grant: about $4.1 million, based on Thursday's stock price
• Options on 150,000 shares

He's also eligible for additional performance-based cash bonuses and an annual equity grant.

CEO Charles Liang said in a statement that Long would have "an immediate positive impact" on the company's financial execution, and thanked Weigand, who stays on to assist with the transition. A spokesperson said details of Weigand's future role will come later. Supermicro declined to make Long available for interviews.

The board is shifting too. It recently added Intel's former IT CTO, Shesha Krishnapura, while Judy Lin — a Western Digital vice president from 2007 to September 2012 — retired. Lin left Western Digital after Long began consulting there in March 2012, a year before he formally joined as chief strategy officer in January 2013.

Long starts work with Sun's sentencing more than a year out, Liaw's trial set for March 2027, and federal subpoenas still open — meaning Supermicro's credibility rebuild now has a finance chief, but no finish line.