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 as Bessent has stepped up his criticism of Nvidia and amid a growing feud with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's department over the suspected diversion of advanced AI chips to China, all while defending President Donald Trump's handling of the 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.