Bessent says anyone at Nvidia should be held accountable for chip leakage

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the Nvidia scandal should be about AI chips reaching China, not Jensen Huang’s private life. On Friday he asked whether Nvidia checked its customers. Anyone at the company should be held accountable, he said.

Bessent was speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”. CNBC asked whether Nvidia’s top processors had reached China through Megaspeed, a Singapore-based Nvidia customer. Bessent said there was “a lot of leakage in the system”. The government is working to close it down, he added.

“The story has been thus far on Jensen Huang’s personal foibles,” Bessent said. “The real story here should be: Did Nvidia know their client, and was there a robust effort at Nvidia to make sure that there was no leakage and that they were selling to what were obviously pass-through shell companies?”

“I think it’s important that anyone at the company there be held accountable for that,” he said.

Huang resigned as Nvidia’s CEO on Thursday. He had admitted an affair with Alice Huang, a former Megaspeed executive. US officials suspect she is a Chinese intelligence asset.

Megaspeed and Nvidia’s chips

Megaspeed secured more than $4bn of Nvidia chips, The New York Times reported. US agents suspected it of smuggling some of them into China. Megaspeed has denied the diversion allegations.

Nvidia banned all sales and shipments to Megaspeed in June 2025, a spokesman told The Wall Street Journal.

“Any leakage is very frustrating”

Bessent linked the leakage to President Donald Trump’s limit on the Nvidia chips China may receive. Asked if he was frustrated by the delays over Megaspeed, he said:

“I am frustrated when President Trump made it very clear that China should not receive any Nvidia chips above H100s.”

“And so any leakage is very frustrating,” he said. It “hurts our great companies in the AI race [and] gives the Chinese an advantage.”

Huang had pushed Washington to ease limits on exporting advanced AI chips to China. In December 2025, Trump said Nvidia could sell its H200 chips to approved Chinese customers. The US would take a percentage of the sales.

“Commerce has the pen”

Bessent said Treasury, the Pentagon, the State Department and the US Trade Representative had all backed listing Megaspeed. The entity list is the Commerce Department’s trade blacklist. It cuts companies off from US technology. Megaspeed is not on it.

“They were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months, but Commerce has the pen,” Bessent said. “You will have to ask them about their internal processes.”

His remarks came two days after an Axios report. It said Bessent had pressed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over Megaspeed in the White House Situation Room. Commerce spokeswoman Kristen Eichamer said the two had “no such conversation”. Asked about it on Friday, Bessent said:

“We don’t repeat conversations in the Situation Room.”

Commerce did not immediately respond to CNBC about Bessent’s remarks. A Commerce spokesperson told Semafor:

“Treasury and Commerce have a great working relationship.”

Commerce halted its Megaspeed probe in 2025 after Nvidia’s lawyer contacted its agents, the Times reported. The Senate Banking Committee has asked Huang and Lutnick to testify in December.