Lutnick in the hot seat as his sons' firm nearly halves its Nvidia stake

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned Thursday, and the aftershocks are landing on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. According to Axios, Lutnick repeatedly resisted White House and U.S. intelligence pressure to crack down on Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company suspected of funneling Nvidia's advanced AI chips to China. Meanwhile, the Wall Street firm Lutnick used to run — Cantor Fitzgerald, now led by his sons Brandon and Kyle — reported a nearly 50% decline in the Nvidia shares it held between September 2025 and March 2026, per a CNBC analysis of securities filings that excludes options.

At the end of 2024, Cantor disclosed more than 3.5 million Nvidia shares worth $479 million, its second-largest reported stock position behind only bitcoin investor MicroStrategy, now Strategy. The share count held steady through September 2025 while the value climbed 36% to $652 million, as the Trump administration moved to ease restrictions on Nvidia's H20 chip sales to China. Then it slid: 3 million shares in December, 1.78 million by the end of March 2026, with the reported value dropping from $652 million to $310 million. Cantor's holdings stayed near that lower level through June 30 at 1.81 million shares, and its next quarterly filing is due Monday.

The firm kept talking up the chipmaker. Cantor hosted Huang and other Nvidia executives for investor meetings in New York in late September, then maintained a $350 price target and overweight rating on the stock in an Oct. 3 report. On Wednesday, Chairman Brandon Lutnick told Fox Business that Nvidia is 'one of the great companies on the planet' with 'an amazing leadership team.' A Cantor spokesperson told CNBC the firm has only had 'immaterial stand-alone proprietary positions in Nvidia,' unlike the 13F positions entered into 'in the ordinary course of business in connection with client swap transactions.' Cantor declined to answer other questions; Commerce, the White House, Lutnick and his sons didn't respond to CNBC.

Ethics experts are raising eyebrows. Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush and now a University of Minnesota law professor, told CNBC there's 'no proof of' Lutnick sharing nonpublic information with Cantor, but 'the appearance doesn't look great,' adding that Lutnick's conversations with his sons 'better be about publicly available information.' Painter also said the administration 'leaks like a sieve when it comes to non-public government information getting to various hedge fund guys,' while stressing there's no evidence Lutnick did so.

Trump is still in Lutnick's corner — a White House official told Reuters on Thursday the president has 'complete confidence' in him. But cracks showed Friday when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC's 'Squawk Box' that Treasury, Defense, State and the U.S. Trade Representative 'were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months,' pointing at Commerce as the department that controls the list. Pressure also came from Capitol Hill, where Sens. Jim Banks and Elizabeth Warren urged Lutnick in March to suspend or reconsider Nvidia's export licenses after three people tied to Nvidia customer Super Micro Computer were indicted on charges of conspiring to smuggle AI chips to China. Trump had authorized new export restrictions on such companies for a third time on Nov. 5.

Business kept flowing regardless. On May 7, Nvidia and Australia-based cloud provider IREN announced a five-year, $3.4 billion computing contract plus a partnership giving Nvidia the right to invest up to $2.1 billion in IREN — with Cantor helping finance the expansion, securities filings show. IREN co-CEO Daniel Roberts told investors on that day's earnings call: 'That's not a passive financial investment. Nvidia is a partner who wins as we deliver.' The filings don't explain why Cantor's reported share count fell, and most of the shares were attributed to CF Secured, a brokerage subsidiary that hedges customer transactions.