Secretary Bessent on Nvidia

逼退黄仁勋没用，美国财政部长明说英伟达免不了责。 美国财政部长斯科特·贝森特（Scott Bessent）在美国财经频道（CNBC）的采访里，把话题从黄仁勋的个人风波拉了回来。 按他的说法，此前大家的注意力一直围着黄仁勋的个人问题转，真正该追问的，其实是英伟达卖芯片的时候到底知不知道客户是谁。 说白了，他追问的是英伟达有没有认真做风控、堵住芯片外流，还是在把货卖给一眼就能看出的“过桥壳公司”。 这里面牵扯到的，可不是一笔小数目。 据报道，一家名叫 Megaspeed 的公司累计花了超过 40 亿美元，已经排进英伟达最大的人工智能芯片客户之列。 而外界此前就在质疑，这批芯片是不是被转运流向了中共国。 在芯片问题上不能让给中共国一寸。 如果只是客户刻意隐瞒，公司或许还能说是审查疏漏。 但彭博社本周曝出的一通电话，让事情没那么好解释了。 报道指出，英伟达的法务总顾问曾致电美国商务部，过问 Megaspeed 高管爱丽丝·黄（Alice Wong）在新加坡或马来西亚被扣留一事，询问这背后是不是美国方面在出手。 这就带出了一个更尖锐的问题： 要是最后查明，英伟达内部有人明知对方是壳公司，或者压根没有认真调查，公司会面临什么后果？ 贝森特没有提前猜测具体处罚，也先划出了个人责任的边界。 他说，目前并不能确定黄仁勋本人对此知情。 但说到法务部门，他认为这位法务总顾问看起来深度卷入了这件事，按理说本该花力气去做好内部合规监督，不该把精力用在找美国商务部纠缠交涉上。 至于公司层面，如果确实存在向壳公司供货的情况，那就说明英伟达当时没有扎实的风控措施，公司里任何牵涉其中的人都应当被追责。 有意思的是，贝森特也没有把英伟达一棍子打死。 他照样称赞这是一家出色的公司，还拿苹果公司举例：当年离开创始人乔布斯之后，库克照样把苹果带到了新高度。 这话里的意思摆得很明白。 他相信已经警醒的英伟达董事会接下来会做彻底调查，不可能靠把创始人推出来就让整件事过去。 对英伟达董事会来说，逼走黄仁勋或许能让个人风波暂时翻篇。 但 40 亿美元的芯片大单究竟卖给了谁、法务总顾问又为什么去替客户高管打听消息，这些账摆在桌面上，没法靠换掉一个人就一笔勾销。 https://t.co/KZXYLlTHgD

— 墓碑科技 (@mubeitech) November 13, 2026

Forcing Jensen Huang out won’t help. The U.S. Treasury Secretary has made it clear that Nvidia cannot escape responsibility.

In an interview with the U.S. financial news channel CNBC, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent steered the conversation away from the controversy surrounding Jensen Huang personally. According to him, attention had been focused on Huang’s personal issues, when the real question was whether Nvidia knew who its customers were when it sold them chips.

Put plainly, he was asking whether Nvidia had taken risk controls seriously and stopped chips from being diverted abroad, or whether it was selling to “shell companies acting as middlemen” that were obvious to anyone with eyes.

The sums involved here are anything but small. According to reports, a company called Megaspeed has spent more than $4 billion in total, putting it among Nvidia’s largest customers for AI chips. Outsiders had already been questioning whether those chips were being transshipped to the Chinese Communist Party’s China. When it comes to chips, we cannot give the Chinese Communist Party an inch.

If customers were simply deliberately concealing their identities, the company might still be able to call it a lapse in due diligence. But a phone call reported by Bloomberg this week made the situation much harder to explain.

The report said Nvidia’s general counsel had called the U.S. Commerce Department to inquire about the detention of Megaspeed executive Alice Wong in Singapore or Malaysia, asking whether the U.S. government was behind it.

That raised a more pointed question: If it turns out that someone inside Nvidia knew the other party was a shell company, or never bothered to investigate properly, what consequences will the company face?

Bessent did not speculate about specific penalties in advance, but he did draw a line around personal responsibility.
He said it was not yet clear whether Jensen Huang himself knew about this.
But when it came to the legal department, he said the general counsel appeared to be deeply involved in the matter. That person should have been putting effort into proper internal compliance oversight, not spending time pestering the U.S. Commerce Department.

As for the company, if it did indeed supply shell companies, that would mean Nvidia lacked solid risk controls at the time, and anyone involved should be held accountable.

Interestingly, Bessent did not write Nvidia off entirely.
He still praised it as an outstanding company, citing Apple as an example: after founder Steve Jobs left, Tim Cook still took Apple to new heights.
The message was clear.
He believed Nvidia’s now-alerted board would conduct a thorough investigation and that simply pushing out the founder would not make the whole matter go away.

For Nvidia’s board, forcing Huang out might temporarily put the controversy over him behind it. But who exactly received those $4 billion worth of chips, and why the general counsel went looking for information on behalf of a customer’s executive, are questions that cannot be swept under the rug by replacing one person.