Bessent challenges Commerce and Nvidia over Megaspeed | Magica
Bessent presses Commerce on Megaspeed restrictions and Nvidia on customer checks
Editorial Team
••📖5 min read
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said agencies had backed export restrictions on Nvidia customer Megaspeed for months. He challenged Commerce’s handling of the case and Nvidia’s safeguards, while Megaspeed denies illicit chip exports to China.
Bessent said several agencies had supported putting Nvidia customer Megaspeed on the Entity List for months.
He directed questions about the delay to Commerce and challenged Nvidia’s efforts to prevent chip diversion.
Megaspeed denies illicit exports; the public accounts leave both the shipment evidence and the listing chronology unresolved.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on November 13 that several agencies had favored export restrictions on Megaspeed International, a Singapore-based technology company and Nvidia customer, for months. Bessent, who previously led the hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, directed questions about the delay to Commerce and questioned Nvidia’s customer checks.
The dispute concerns who can obtain processors from Nvidia, the chipmaker whose advanced products have become central to artificial intelligence. Megaspeed has been accused of diverting chips to China and denies illicit exports. Bessent’s comments put both government enforcement and the supplier’s safeguards under scrutiny.
Reported processor purchases exceeded $4.8 billion; the purchase period and any diverted amount remain unestablished. Source: The Daily Beast.
Agency support and the power to act
In his CNBC interview, Bessent said Treasury, State, the U.S. Trade Representative and the military department, which he called “War,” had favored adding Megaspeed to the Entity List for months. He directed questions about internal procedures to Commerce and BIS, according to the network’s .
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“Commerce has the pen,” Bessent said, as quoted in a contemporaneous report. Commerce did not immediately respond to that report’s request for comment.
The Entity List adds license requirements and limits most license exceptions for exports, reexports and in-country transfers involving listed entities. A January 2025 listing rule describes an End-User Review Committee comprising Commerce, State, Defense, Energy and, where appropriate, Treasury. Commerce chairs it; additions require a majority vote.
That framework assigns the listing decision to a committee, qualifying the shorthand that Commerce alone controls it. The U.S. Trade Representative, which Bessent identified as supporting action, is not among the members specified in the rule. His interview did not describe Energy’s position.
Bessent did not establish whether a formal proposal had been circulated or a vote taken. Agency support and a completed committee decision are different stages of the process.
The mechanism has reached companies outside China: that rule added 14 entities under China and two under Singapore. It also describes a preventive standard, including reasonable cause, based on specific facts, to believe an entity poses a significant risk of involvement in activities contrary to U.S. national-security or foreign-policy interests. A proven illicit shipment is not the only basis the rule describes for listing an entity.
The disputed route for Nvidia chips
Megaspeed advertises its partnership with Nvidia on its website. It was accused in 2025 of illicitly shipping advanced Nvidia chips into China, but said that December there was “no evidence” of such exports, according to the account of the allegations and its response.
Megaspeed reiterated on November 12 that it took compliance with American export-control laws “extremely seriously” and was committed to working constructively and transparently with the U.S. government, the same account reported.
A separate report put Megaspeed’s reported processor purchases at more than $4.8 billion. It did not specify the purchase period or establish how much, if any, was diverted. The figure describes the reported scale of buying, not a measured value of illicit shipments.
The immediate backdrop is the November 12 resignation of Nvidia co-founder and former chief executive Jensen Huang, who helped establish the company in 1993 and led it until his departure. He resigned after revelations of an affair with former Megaspeed executive Alice Huang. The account of his resignation, citing earlier New York Times reporting, said U.S. intelligence suspected her of being a Chinese spy. That remains an allegation, distinct from evidence that chips reached prohibited buyers.
Nvidia disclosed the preceding weekend that it was investigating Huang after he informed directors of the relationship, and maintained that he did not know Alice Huang was a suspected spy, according to the account of the company’s response.
Bessent argued that scrutiny should extend beyond Huang’s personal conduct. In the CNBC excerpts, he questioned whether Nvidia knew its clients and had made a robust effort to prevent leakage through what he characterized as pass-through shell companies.
He also said President Donald Trump had made clear that China should not receive Nvidia chips above H100s, and argued that leakage would give China an advantage in the AI race. He did not identify the processors allegedly diverted through Megaspeed or the license conditions applicable to a particular shipment.
Bessent’s November 13 interview precedes congressional appearances planned for December 1 and December 3. Source: CNBC.
Commerce’s next explanation
Congressional scrutiny offers a venue to establish the missing chronology. Lutnick has agreed to testify voluntarily before the Senate Banking Committee after its chairman, Tim Scott, requested an appearance on December 3. Jensen Huang has also been summoned by three House committees for a closed-door interview on December 1, according to the report on the planned appearances.
The same report, citing an earlier Axios account, described a confrontation in which Bessent asked Lutnick why Megaspeed had not been listed and Lutnick said he would look into it. Commerce denied that the confrontation occurred. That disputed exchange does not settle what happened in the listing process.
Commerce’s decision history and Nvidia’s customer records would answer different parts of the dispute. The missing government chronology is whether a listing proposal was submitted, circulated and voted on, and what evidence informed each agency’s position. On the supplier side, the unresolved questions concern the buyers Nvidia checked, the chips supplied and their eventual destinations. Those records would help distinguish an interagency delay from an export-control failure, or show how the two overlapped.
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