U.S. Treasury Secretary questions whether Nvidia knowingly sold GPUs to shell companies

In a CNBC interview, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said export controls cannot stop all restricted hardware from reaching China, but argued the focus should shift from Jensen Huang’s “personal foibles” to whether Nvidia knew its customers were “obviously pass-through shell companies” and whether it made a “robust effort” to prevent leakage — adding that “anyone at the company there be held accountable.” Bessent said it is not known whether Huang himself knew, declined to speculate on consequences for Nvidia, and said he expects the company’s board to investigate; he also criticized Nvidia general counsel Timothy Teter for contacting the Commerce Department over the detention of Megaspeed’s Alice Wong in Singapore, saying Teter “probably should have done more oversight rather than the haranguing.” Bessent said he does not favor new restrictions or added agency powers, arguing existing rules should be enforced instead, and said Treasury, War, and State departments and the USTR had backed adding Megaspeed to the Entity List for months, while the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security — which holds that authority — reportedly stalled the move. The remarks are criticism and questioning rather than a new enforcement action or documented finding against Nvidia; the article’s premise that China obtained millions of restricted GPUs is an allegation it attributes to prior reporting.