Bessent blames Commerce for stalled Megaspeed blacklist as Nvidia shares slip 2.1%

Updated 3:19 p.m. ET, Nov. 13

Key points

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said his department and several others backed blacklisting Megaspeed for months, but Commerce controls the decision.
• Singapore revenue reached $10.2 billion in the July quarter, 22% of Nvidia's total, before Nvidia stopped reporting it separately.
• Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia CEO, Colette Kress is interim leader, and Congress has opened probes into Nvidia's chip sales.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a television interview on Friday that his department and several others had wanted Megaspeed placed on the entity list, the US trade blacklist, for months. He put the blame on the Commerce Department, which holds that authority, saying it "has the pen."

Bessent said the Treasury, Defense and State departments and the US trade representative all supported the listing, and that his deputy had been pressing for it at the deputies level. He said he was frustrated by the delay and by reports of AI chips leaking into China, which he said gives Chinese companies an advantage in the AI race.

Nvidia's leadership and exposure

Jensen Huang stepped down as Nvidia chief executive on Thursday after revelations about an affair with a former Megaspeed executive, a woman suspected of being an operative for China. Colette Kress, the company's chief financial officer, will lead Nvidia on an interim basis.

Megaspeed is not on the list that bars US companies from working with it, and it has been contacted for comment. BBC reported that the Commerce Department had been investigating the company last year over suspicions that it smuggled some of Nvidia's advanced AI chips into China.

Singapore authorities said they had investigated Megaspeed and the former executive from February 2025 and found insufficient evidence of espionage. Singapore did, however, bar her from re-entering the country.

The numbers behind the questions

Fortune reported that Megaspeed and its Malaysian subsidiary Speedmatric moved at least $7.5 billion in Nvidia chips to China, and that Nvidia added the company to an internal block list in June 2025. Megaspeed had been one of Nvidia's largest buyers in Asia.

In the quarter ending July 2025, Nvidia reported $10.2 billion in revenue from Singapore, or 22% of total revenue, and an 81% rise from a year earlier. In the next report, covering the three months to October 2025, Singapore no longer appeared in its geographic breakdown. Nvidia had switched from customer billing location to customer headquarters location as its basis for reporting.

Malaysia is determining whether AI chips brought into the country by a unit of Megaspeed were later shipped overseas, according to Bloomberg.

Under the arrangement Senators Ron Wyden and Representative Richard Neal described, H200 chips could reach Chinese buyers provided they first entered the US for inspection. A 25% tariff was imposed on those chips under a section of the Trade Act that allows the president to act against imports that threaten national security.

What officials and analysts said

Senate Banking Committee chairman Tim Scott posted on X that "Recent reports raise serious concerns about our national security." Neal and Wyden said the use of that statute "appears to have done the opposite," undermining national security.

Rajgopal, an accounting professor at Columbia Business School, said the timing of the reporting change was curious but that public filings alone do not show who knew what. "I wouldn't say Kress must have known," he said. He also said that a finance chief leading a tech company was a poor fit: "A CFO running a tech company is not a good idea."

Congress and the timeline

Huang has been summoned to testify before the Senate Banking Committee about his relationship with the former Megaspeed executive. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has also been summoned to appear before the committee in December. Other committees have asked both Lutnick and his department to keep all records on Nvidia and Huang.

Tensions between Bessent and Lutnick have reportedly simmered before, including over tariff policy last year, according to US media. Bessent's public criticism is a rare instance of internal administration debate spilling into view.

NVDA shares are down 2.14% today as of 3:18 p.m. ET.

What's next: Lutnick is scheduled to testify before the Senate Banking Committee in December.

Sources: Axios, BBC, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Fortune, The New York Times