Lutnick's Sons' Firm Cut Nvidia Stake as Commerce Chief Faced China Chip Scrutiny

Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm now run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's sons, cut its reported Nvidia (NVDA) holdings by nearly half between September 2025 and March 2026, a CNBC analysis of securities filings found. The decline coincided with pressure on Lutnick to crack down on suspected smuggling of Nvidia's advanced AI chips to China.

Nvidia had been one of Cantor's largest reported positions. At the end of 2024 the firm disclosed more than 3.5 million Nvidia shares worth $479 million, and the count held steady through September 2025 even as the value rose 36% to $652 million. Over the following six months the reported count fell 49%, to 3 million in December and 1.78 million by the end of March 2026, with value dropping to $310 million. Holdings stayed near that lower level through June 30, the latest public quarter, at 1.81 million shares; the next quarterly filing is due Monday.

The timing overlaps with White House and U.S. intelligence officials pressing Lutnick to act against Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company suspected of funneling Nvidia's advanced AI chips to China, according to Axios. Lutnick repeatedly resisted those efforts, Axios reported, even as President Donald Trump authorized new export restrictions on such companies for a third time on November 5.

Cantor also maintained commercial ties across Nvidia's AI business, helping arrange billions of dollars in financing for the chipmaker's partners. On May 7, Nvidia and Australia-based cloud provider IREN announced a five-year, $3.4 billion cloud computing contract with an option for Nvidia to invest up to $2.1 billion. In late September, Cantor hosted Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and other top executives for investor meetings in New York; a Cantor research report dated October 3 maintained a $350 price target and overweight rating on the stock.

Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush and now a corporate law professor at the University of Minnesota, told CNBC there is no proof Lutnick shared nonpublic information with Cantor, but that the appearance doesn't look great. He said Lutnick's conversations with his sons better involve only publicly available information.

A Cantor spokesperson said the firm has had only immaterial stand-alone proprietary positions in Nvidia, and that the 13F positions were entered in the ordinary course of client swap transactions common in institutional markets. The Commerce Department, the White House, Lutnick and his sons did not respond to CNBC's questions.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC's Squawk Box on Friday that the Departments of Treasury, Defense and State and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative all favored placing Megaspeed on the entity list for months, and pointed to Commerce as the department responsible for imposing it.

Trump is standing by Lutnick. A White House official told Reuters on Thursday that the president maintains complete confidence in the commerce secretary.

Nvidia shares were down 2.14% in delayed trading at $162.63. The article does not establish why Cantor's reported share count fell or whether its overall exposure to Nvidia declined; most of those shares were attributed to CF Secured, a Cantor brokerage subsidiary that hedges customer transactions.