Commerce secretary faces heat as his family's old firm dodged its own Nvidia stock while doing deals.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who previously led Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald now run by his sons, is facing scrutiny over his handling of an alleged Nvidia chip-smuggling scandal. While Lutnick resisted calls to crack down on a Singapore-based company suspected of illicitly funneling Nvidia's AI chips to China, his former firm was quietly reducing its direct stock holdings in Nvidia by nearly 50%.

Despite this pullback, Cantor Fitzgerald continued facilitating billions in financing for Nvidia's business partners and maintained close ties with CEO Jensen Huang, even after Lutnick allegedly received classified intelligence warnings about Huang's connections to a suspected Chinese spy. The situation highlights a cynical pattern in tech finance where insider access and deal-making often trump regulatory consistency or straightforward investment theses, leaving officials and their associated firms navigating murky ethical waters.