Bessent calls for a 'dramatic shakeup' at Nvidia and an outside CEO

Nov 15, 2026
The Treasury secretary questioned whether Nvidia pushed illicit chip sales to boost earnings and said other executives should face scrutiny, two days before its results.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on Sunday for a "dramatic shakeup" at Nvidia after Jensen Huang's resignation, saying the board should look outside the company for its next chief executive and suggesting other executives should face scrutiny over export control compliance, CNBC reports. "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 on Fox News.

"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," he said. Bessent also questioned Nvidia's financial disclosures, pointing to a surge in reported Singapore revenue as its China sales fell; Nvidia stopped reporting Singapore revenue separately in November 2025.

The remarks come amid a feud between the Treasury secretary and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over the suspected diversion of advanced AI chips to China through Singapore-based Megaspeed, and two days before Nvidia reports its first quarterly results since Huang resigned and CFO Colette Kress became interim CEO. Bessent said President Trump has drawn a firm line against selling China chips more advanced than Nvidia's H200.

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