Scott Bessent urges Nvidia to hire an outside CEO and wants answers within 10 days on whether it pushed "seemingly illicit" chip sales to China to boost revenue (Tony Czuczka/Bloomberg)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called for a "dramatic shakeup" in leadership at Nvidia Corp. following the ouster of chief executive Jensen Huang. Bessent is urging the company to hire an outside CEO and has requested answers within 10 days regarding whether Nvidia pushed "seemingly illicit" chip sales to China to boost revenue, according to Bloomberg.

Fortune reports that Huang was ousted following a romantic affair with a suspected Chinese spy named Alice Huang. This follows a May report from short seller Culper Research, which raised concerns regarding Nvidia's exposure to China. Culper Research alleged that more than 20% of Nvidia’s fiscal 2026 compute revenue was driven by Chinese demand, despite company assertions that its China business had fallen to zero after U.S. export restrictions in April 2025.

The allegations from Culper Research suggest that revenue was generated through the smuggling of restricted GPUs and via Southeast Asian intermediaries. The research firm specifically highlighted Singapore-based Megaspeed International, which it claims was secretly financed by China’s Alibaba.

Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, Fortune — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.