Cantor Fitzgerald’s reported Nvidia holdings fell sharply while the firm kept doing business across the chipmaker’s AI ecosystem, CNBC finds. The figures raise questions about the overlap between Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s former firm and decisions involving advanced AI chips, but CNBC says there is no evidence the firm’s interests influenced his actions.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
CNBC analysed securities filings and reviewed company announcements and Wall Street research. It found that Cantor’s reported Nvidia share count fell 49% between September 2025 and March 2026, from 3.5 million shares at the end of 2024 to 1.78 million. The filings do not establish why the count fell or whether Cantor’s overall financial exposure to Nvidia declined.
The firm continued to work with companies in Nvidia’s AI business orbit. CNBC reports that Cantor helped arrange a $3 billion IREN bond offering in May 2026 and had also advised AI infrastructure developer Lancium on a $600 million financing deal. Cantor told CNBC that its reported Nvidia positions reflected ordinary-course client swap transactions and were not material stand-alone proprietary positions. It declined to answer other questions. The Commerce Department, the White House, Lutnick and his sons did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Why it matters
The reporting connects a former Wall Street firm’s commercial relationships to scrutiny of Lutnick’s handling of suspected chip diversion to China. That is a legitimate conflict-of-interest question, not proof of one. CNBC cites an ethics expert who said there is no proof Lutnick shared non-public information with Cantor; the filings also do not show why the Nvidia share count changed.
Advanced AI chips sit at the centre of export-control policy. The practical issue is whether the public record can distinguish ordinary financial and commercial activity from any influence on decisions about who can access those chips.
Our read
This is a story about the evidence and its limits, not a verdict. The share-count decline is striking, but filings do not explain it, and a business relationship is not proof of improper influence. The useful next step is to test the timeline against documents and responses, rather than letting suspicion do the work of evidence.
What to watch
- Cantor’s next securities filing and any explanation of its reported holdings.
- Responses from Lutnick, the Commerce Department and the White House.
- Any documented evidence linking commercial interests to export-control decisions.
Discussion spark: When senior officials’ former firms keep doing business in industries affected by their decisions, should disclosure rules be enough, or should those firms face tighter limits?
Sources and evidence
- Lutnick faces questions over Nvidia spy scandal. His sons’ firm has deep ties to the chipmaker – CNBC (13 November 2026, 18:32 UTC)
Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.