Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that Nvidia's board should "go outside the company" for its next CEO, Reuters reported. He spoke on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures." The board is looking for a successor after Jensen Huang stepped down on Thursday, Nov. 12; Nvidia's Form 8-K names CFO Colette Kress interim CEO while it searches.

What Bessent said

The wire report quotes him: "This makes me think that as the board conducts a search for a new leader that they need to go outside the company, that just (with) what was going on inside the company, they need a dramatic shakeup."

Investing.com quotes two more lines:

  • "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?"
  • "And I think we need answers in the next 10 days from the board and from the outside counsel."

The wire report says Bessent wants Nvidia's board and its outside counsel to answer questions about the company's culture of compliance with export restrictions. Investing.com says he wants to know whether Nvidia knowingly overlooked warning signs about shell companies, many based in Singapore, that funneled chips to China. That is the second outlet's paraphrase, not a quote.

Background

The wire report says Huang stepped down on Thursday after revelations of extramarital affairs, including one involving a suspected Chinese spy. We have covered the earlier reporting in our story on the spy report and our story on the resignation.

The Financial Times said Friday that Nvidia's board has approached Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas about replacing Huang, per the wire report. Bloomberg's headline, as shown on Techmeme, also says Bessent called for a "dramatic shakeup" after Huang's exit. We saw only that headline.

What is not established

  • No Nvidia response. We found no Nvidia response in the coverage we read.
  • No board decision. We found nothing saying the board has chosen a successor or agreed to look outside. The Haas approach is the Financial Times' reporting as relayed by the wire report.
  • The 10 days. The coverage we read gives no consequence if the board and counsel do not answer in 10 days, and no detail on who would receive the answers.
  • The interview. We did not watch it or read a transcript. The quotes above are as the two outlets report them.

What we checked

We read the full wire report and the Investing.com story. We saw only the other headline summary. We did not watch the Fox News interview, read a transcript, or contact Nvidia or the Treasury Department.