Bessent: Treasury has been pressing for months to add Megaspeed to the Entity List

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the Treasury Department, the Department of War, the Office of the US Trade Representative and the State Department had all been supporting for months the addition of Singapore-based cloud computing services company Megaspeed to the US "Entity List."

In an interview with CNBC, Bessent said that "coordination among the agencies is in place," noting that the Treasury Department, the Department of War, the Office of the US Trade Representative and the State Department had for months backed adding Megaspeed to the Entity List. Bessent explained that the body responsible for this file is the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Commerce Department.

He added that the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) does not have the authority to decide such export-related matters, noting that the Federal Trade Commission could in turn add the company to its own restricted list.

Bessent affirmed that there is a "major leak" in the system of export restrictions on chips destined for China, stressing the need to hold accountable anyone inside Nvidia whose responsibility is established.

The roots of the case go back to reports published by The New York Times indicating that Alice Huang, a former director at Megaspeed and a close associate of CEO Jensen Huang, was working for Chinese intelligence and passing information to Beijing. The Nvidia board had announced on November 8 that it was opening an independent investigation into the matter, before it was announced that Jensen Huang had been dismissed from all his executive positions and that Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress had been appointed interim CEO.

Bessent noted that media coverage has so far focused on Jensen Huang's personal matter, whereas the core issue is whether Nvidia carried out due diligence in verifying the identity of its customers to prevent chips from leaking to China.