Bitdeer signed a $750 million stock sales agreement with Lutnick’s Cantor Fitzgerald six weeks after his nomination, and the Malaysia chip rule went unpublished before his sale of the firm closed
Yesterday Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive of Nvidia, the most valuable chip company in the world, after admitting to an affair with a woman American intelligence agencies believe was working as a spy for China. Her name is Alice Huang, and she is no relation to him.
Alice Huang ran Megaspeed, a company in Singapore whose Malaysian affiliate bought at least $4.8 billion of equipment containing Nvidia’s chips. The Commerce Department opened an investigation in 2024 into whether those chips were ending up in China.
Most of the coverage has stayed on the affair but I wanted to know whose job it was to keep her company from getting the chips in the first place, and the answer was a man I have been writing about since April.
Howard Lutnick is the Secretary of Commerce. If you have been following my work, you know I have traced his firm’s business with Jeffrey Epstein in The Lutnick Deal, his family’s stake in the digital dollar company Tether in my May investigation, and the betting markets his family’s companies run on facts his own department produces in my July piece on hurricanes. In August I wrote that the people building our future were racing to own chips, data centers and the government permission needed to move all of this advanced technology around the world.
This week the Senate asked Lutnick to testify about Nvidia, and he agreed.
Howard Lutnick was running Cantor Fitzgerald when it started selling stock for a company called Bitdeer in March 2024, under an agreement for up to $250 million.
Six weeks after he was picked to run the Commerce Department, Bitdeer signed a second agreement naming Cantor, this time for up to $1 billion. In August 2026 Bitdeer filed to sell up to $1 billion more.
Now, let me explain what exactly a “rule” is because it matters to understanding the next part of this.
A rule is a regulation, a written order from a federal agency that carries the force of law. Congress passed a law saying the Commerce Department may restrict the sale of sensitive technology. The department’s rules say exactly which chips, which countries and which buyers are allowed.
A rule only counts once it is printed in the Federal Register, the government’s daily record of new regulations. Until then it is a draft in an office, and every company can go on doing what it was already doing because it’s not officially a rule yet. When a rule says a license is required, a company has to apply to the Commerce Department before it ships anything, and the department can say no.
Now, a rule requiring a license to ship Nvidia chips into Malaysia went unpublished in July 2025, before Lutnick’s sale of Cantor had closed. The very next month Bitdeer told its investors it was installing Nvidia rack systems in Malaysia.
Bitdeer stock:
Why Bitdeer (BTDR) Stock Fell Even After Revenue Beat by $70 Million
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Lutnick’s longtime friendship with Trump may not save him
The Nvidia scandal has spread far beyond the tech company.
US President Donald Trump, left, and Howard Lutnick, US commerce secretary, during a campaign event in Wasilla, Alaska, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026. | Nathaniel Wilder/Bloomberg/Getty Images
President Donald Trump is again facing pressure over his Commerce secretary and longtime friend Howard Lutnick as the department and its leaders face mounting bipartisan criticism in the wake of the Nvidia scandal, according to multiple current and former officials.
And he’s facing criticism from within the administration, too, for a close relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang they say resulted in lax oversight of the chipmaker. Huang resigned amid the scandal.
Seven current and former administration officials said that the seriousness of the allegations makes this episode substantially different from past efforts to undermine Lutnick. But even some who believe the controversy should cost Lutnick his job are skeptical Trump will turn against his longtime friend, given the president’s own involvement in decisions about chip exports to China. The officials were granted anonymity to speak candidly about private conversations and assessments.
Yet the firm, formerly run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and now led by his sons, Brandon and Kyle, reported a nearly 50% decline in the number of Nvidia shares it held between September 2025 and March 2026, according to a CNBC analysis of securities filings that excludes options. Nvidia had been one of the largest stock positions reported in Cantor’s filings.
The decline coincided with White House and U.S. intelligence officials pressing Lutnick to crack down on Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company suspected of funneling Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence chips to China. Lutnick repeatedly resisted those efforts, Axios reported Nov. 11.
By the time Cantor hosted Huang in New York, Lutnick had also received a classified intelligence warning, according to a Nov. 10 Axios report, about Huang’s ties to a suspected Chinese spy and had appeared alongside the CEO at a G20 technology summit in North Carolina.
Even as Cantor pared back its Nvidia stake, it continued doing business across the chipmaker’s AI empire. A CNBC review of securities filings, corporate announcements and Wall Street research found the firm has helped arrange billions of dollars in financing for Nvidia’s business partners while maintaining close ties to the chipmaker’s leadership.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
