Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says if Nvidia was a bank, ‘a lot of the executives would be removed’ — while Huang reportedly eyes return

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent criticized Nvidia for not complying with U.S. export restrictions, suggesting that "a lot of the executives would be removed" if the company were a bank. The Commerce Department, which has the authority to blacklist companies, blocked Nvidia from being added to the entity list, but Bessent stated that the real issue is whether Nvidia had a culture of compliance.

The Treasury Department, along with other federal agencies, pushed for a trade restriction on Megaspeed, a cloud computing firm suspected of facilitating AI chip exports to China. Bessent questioned whether Nvidia used shell companies to circumvent the restrictions. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently stepped down, with CFO Colette Kress named interim CEO.

Huang has reportedly considered returning to the company, with potential candidates including top executives from AMD and Arm. Bessent believes the board should seek a new CEO through external means, emphasizing that Nvidia needs a "dramatic shakeup" to ensure compliance with export regulations.