Bessent Urges 'Dramatic Shakeup' at Nvidia, Calls for Outside CEO

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called for a "dramatic shakeup" at Nvidia and urged its board to hire a chief executive from outside the company, sharpening U.S. government pressure on the chipmaker after CEO Jensen Huang resigned last week.

Speaking on Fox News on Sunday, Bessent said the board should look beyond Nvidia's current leadership as it searches for a permanent successor to Huang, who stepped down on Nov. 12 following reports about his extramarital relationships.

"This makes me think that as the board conducts a search for a new leader that they need to go outside the company," Bessent said. "That — just what was going on inside the company — they need a dramatic shakeup."

Export-control questions

Bessent said his concerns extend beyond Huang's personal conduct to whether Nvidia facilitated sales of advanced artificial-intelligence chips to Chinese entities. He pointed to signs of shell companies, many of them in Singapore, funneling chips to China.

"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?" he said. He added that the board and outside counsel should provide answers "in the next 10 days."

Nvidia's board has named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO, according to NDTV Profit.

Megaspeed scrutiny

Huang's resignation followed revelations about his relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed International. U.S. intelligence officials believe she is a Chinese intelligence asset, according to The New York Times, as cited by CNBC.

Megaspeed said Sunday that Alice Huang left the company effective Aug. 30, 2025 and has no current role. The cloud-computing firm, which describes itself as a core partner of Nvidia's computing-power cloud business in the region, said it has hired outside legal counsel to investigate media reports about its business, supply chain and global operations.

The company has previously faced scrutiny over whether chips supplied through its business were redirected to customers in China.

Feud inside the Cabinet

Bessent's remarks come amid a public dispute with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over the suspected diversion of AI chips to China. Both men are expected to accompany President Donald Trump to China this week, where Trump is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit.

A White House official told Reuters on Thursday that Trump maintains "complete confidence" in Lutnick.

The affair has become a test of how the U.S. polices the export of the advanced semiconductors that underpin the global AI boom — and of the governance of the company that dominates that market.