The crisis at Nvidia has moved to Washington. Two days after Jensen Huang resigned as the chip giant's chief executive, the Senate Banking Committee has asked him and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to testify about how Nvidia's most advanced processors may have reached China despite US export controls. Lutnick has agreed to appear, his department said, putting the official in charge of those controls at the centre of the affair.
What happened
On 12 November, the committee's chairman, Senator Tim Scott (Republican, South Carolina), asked Huang to testify on 3 December and Lutnick on 10 December, and warned that subpoenas could follow if they did not come voluntarily, CNBC reported.
The Commerce Department responded quickly. Its spokesperson, Kristen Eichamer, said that Lutnick had "proactively agreed to appear voluntarily". A White House official told Reuters that the president retained "complete confidence" in his commerce secretary. Rumours of an imminent dismissal circulated on social media and in some outlets, but Novora24 has found no on-the-record source to confirm them.
At Nvidia, chief financial officer Colette Kress has been running the company as interim chief executive since Huang's departure.
Megaspeed at the centre of the questions
Much of the scrutiny concerns Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud computing company first incorporated in 2015 under the name 7Road International. It is listed as an official Nvidia cloud partner, with access to high-end systems such as the GB200 NVL72 racks and HGX H100 servers.
US officials and lawmakers suspect the company of having helped move billions of dollars' worth of restricted chips to China. According to The New York Times, a Malaysian affiliate, Speedmatrix, bought at least $4.8 billion of artificial-intelligence equipment between June 2024 and February 2026. Megaspeed denies any wrongdoing and points to a review carried out in December 2025 by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) and Nvidia, which, it says, found no violations.
The company's links to Nvidia's former chief executive have added to the pressure. CNBC reported that Alice Huang (also known as Huang Le), who served as Megaspeed's managing director for eight months in 2023, had a personal relationship with Jensen Huang. Neither Nvidia nor Megaspeed has said that this relationship influenced any business decision.
Why Lutnick is in the spotlight
The Commerce Department decides which foreign companies are placed on the "entity list", the US trade blacklist that blocks access to American technology. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said publicly that the Treasury, the Pentagon, the State Department and the US Trade Representative had favoured listing Megaspeed "for months", while stressing that the decision belongs to Commerce.
Axios reported that Lutnick had "repeatedly resisted" a crackdown on the company. The Commerce Department's own inquiry has since been handed to the Justice Department; according to Semafor, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are now involved.
Some critics have also raised Lutnick's former firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, which is now run by his sons. CNBC said it found no evidence that the firm had influenced Commerce Department decisions on Nvidia or Megaspeed.
Pressure from both parties
The affair has drawn criticism across the political spectrum:
- Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons wrote to the administration on 11 November demanding explanations.
- Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Richard Neal have opened their own inquiry.
- On the Republican side, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Brian Mast, said he still had confidence in Lutnick.
What comes next
The two hearings set for 3 and 10 December will be the first public opportunity to question Huang and Lutnick under oath about how export controls were applied to Megaspeed. Lawmakers are expected to ask why the company was not added to the entity list, what the December 2025 review actually examined, and what Nvidia knew about where its chips ended up.
What remains to be confirmed
- Whether Jensen Huang will appear voluntarily on 3 December.
- The scope of the Justice Department investigation and whether it targets companies, individuals or both.
- The exact volume of Nvidia chips that may have reached China through intermediaries; some reported figures, such as $7.5 billion, have not been independently verified.
Main image: Howard Lutnick, official portrait, 2025 — Daniel Torok / The White House, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
