Should Nvidia Look Outside for New CEO?

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that Nvidia should “go outside the company” to find a new ceo and that its board needs a dramatic shakeup, Reuters reported, as Washington’s scrutiny of the chipmaker’s handling of export restrictions intensified.

Bessent made the remarks in an interview on Fox News. According to Reuters, Jensen Huang stepped down as Nvidia’s CEO on Thursday after revelations of extramarital affairs, including one involving a suspected Chinese spy. Reuters also cited a Financial Times report on Friday that Nvidia’s board had approached Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas about replacing Huang.

Ten-day deadline for answers

Bessent said Nvidia’s board and its outside counsel must answer questions about the company’s culture of compliance with export restrictions within the next 10 days, Reuters and Politico reported.

Politico said Bessent wants to establish whether Nvidia deliberately ignored warning signs about shell companies, many of them in Singapore, and at what level of the company any failure occurred, from junior staff up to the C-suite. Nvidia opened an investigation last week and hired law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to lead it, according to Politico.

Politico reported that the woman described as the alleged Chinese asset was an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company suspected of smuggling chips to China. None of the reports read for this article carried a statement from Nvidia responding to Bessent’s comments.

Looking for a new ceo!

Debate over new chip rules

Bessent also pushed back against calls for tighter chip export legislation, arguing that the problem lies in weak enforcement rather than gaps in the law. “We have all the rules we need, we just need them enforced,” he said, as quoted by Politico.

He repeated his criticism of the Commerce Department under Secretary Howard Lutnick, saying many other departments had pushed for a crackdown on the company at the centre of the scandal but that Commerce held responsibility for the decision, Politico reported.

Lawmakers are pressing ahead regardless. Senators Jim Banks and Elizabeth Warren back new legislation, Politico said, and House Speaker Mike Johnson called for chip-sale legislation last week. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is pushing to add three proposals from a Senate bill to the year-end defence authorisation bill: tracking technology on high-end chips, a congressional say over export licensing, and tighter curbs on chipmaking equipment.

Representative John Moolenaar, who chairs the House China Select Committee, questioned on CBS’s “Face the Nation” why Commerce had opposed export controls so strongly, according to Politico.

What’s next – New CEO?

Bessent’s 10-day window puts pressure on Nvidia’s board to respond on export compliance while it searches for a new leader. Moolenaar said Congress should stay focused over the next few weeks on export controls in the year-end defence bill, and lawmakers from both parties want Lutnick to testify on how national security risks were handled, Politico reported. Asked whether Lutnick should travel to China with the president this week, Moolenaar said he would leave that decision to the president.

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