Bessent calls for ‘dramatic shakeup’ at Nvidia, urges outside CEO

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday called for a “dramatic shakeup” at Nvidia after CEO Jensen Huang‘s resignation, questioning whether the chipmaker pursued illicit sales of its advanced artificial intelligence chips to boost earnings.

Bessent said Nvidia’s board should look outside the company for its next chief executive and suggested other executives should face scrutiny over the chip giant’s compliance with U.S. export controls.

“I want to keep coming back to what was the culture at Nvidia, and were they pressing these seemingly illicit sales to goose their revenues and their earnings?” Bessent said in an interview on Fox News.

The remarks come amid a growing feud between Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over the suspected diversion of advanced AI chips to China, even as the Treasury secretary continues to defend President Donald Trump’s handling of the matter.

Both Bessent and Lutnick are expected to accompany Trump to China this week, Semafor reported Sunday, putting the two Cabinet secretaries alongside the president as he prepares to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the APEC summit.

A White House official told Reuters on Thursday that the president maintains “complete confidence” in Lutnick, despite mounting scrutiny of the secretary’s handling of the Nvidia matter.

Huang resigned Thursday following revelations about his relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, whom U.S. intelligence officials suspect of spying for China. Megaspeed is suspected of diverting Nvidia chips to China in violation of U.S. export controls.

Nvidia named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress interim CEO.

Bessent suggested Sunday that Nvidia’s problems extended well beyond Huang.

“If this were a bank and they hadn’t complied like this, the OCC would be in there right now, and a lot of the executives would be removed,” Bessent said, referring to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Bessent also questioned Nvidia’s financial disclosures, pointing to a surge in reported Singapore revenue as its China sales fell.

Nvidia stopped separately reporting Singapore revenue in November 2025, saying a new methodology based on customers’ headquarters rather than billing addresses better reflected the geographic distribution of its sales.

Bessent’s remarks came two days after he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that several federal agencies had supported adding Megaspeed to the government’s export blacklist for months.

“But Commerce has the pen,” Bessent said.

The public rebuke followed reporting by Axios that Bessent confronted Lutnick in the White House Situation Room over Commerce’s failure to act against Megaspeed. Commerce denied that the confrontation took place.

Lutnick is also facing scrutiny over his family’s financial ties to Nvidia. CNBC reported Friday that Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm formerly run by Lutnick and now led by his sons, has helped arrange billions of dollars in financing for Nvidia’s business partners.

Cantor said Nvidia share holdings fell nearly 50% over six months as national security concerns surrounding Huang escalated. The positions were associated with client swap transactions, not proprietary investments, the investment bank said.

There is no evidence Lutnick shared sensitive information with his sons or that Cantor traded on such information.

Bessent on Sunday said Trump had drawn a firm line against sales of chips more advanced than Nvidia’s H200 to China. Trump himself authorized H200 sales to approved Chinese customers in December —following months of lobbying by Huang — in an arrangement under which the U.S. government would receive a 25% cut.

Bessent’s latest criticism comes two days before Nvidia is scheduled to report its first quarterly earnings since Huang’s departure.