--- title: Lutnick Was Reportedly Warned About Jensen Huang in May, and Megaspeed Is Still Not on His Department's Blacklist description: Bessent asked Lutnick why Megaspeed is not on the Entity List, and Lutnick said he did not know, Axios reports. The company is still not on the blacklist. author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-11-11T18:31:28.961Z updated: 2026-11-11T18:31:28.979Z canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/lutnick-memo-megaspeed-entity-list image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/lutnick-memo-megaspeed-entity-list.webp categories: Artificial Intelligence content_type: News region: United States publication: Sovereign Magazine about: - type: Person name: Howard Lutnick description: Howard Lutnick is the US Commerce Secretary, confirmed by the Senate in February 2025, and previously led the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald. jobTitle: US Commerce Secretary --- Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was sent a highly classified memo in May warning about Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang's relationship with [Alice Huang](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/who-is-alice-huang-megaspeed), a Megaspeed executive whom US officials believe to be a Chinese intelligence asset, Axios has reported. Six months later, Megaspeed is still not on the Entity List, the trade blacklist kept by the US Department of Commerce, which Lutnick runs. Alice Huang has not been charged, and China denies the allegation. In a second report on Wednesday, Axios said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had asked Lutnick at a White House meeting after the 3 November midterms why Megaspeed was not on the list, and that Lutnick told him he did not know. Three House Democrats had written to Lutnick on 9 November, before either report, [asking him to say in writing by 1 December](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/commerce-department-megaspeed-lutnick) what he and his officials knew about the intelligence on Alice Huang and Megaspeed. ## The Memo Reportedly Reached Lutnick, Whose Department Licenses Nvidia's Chip Sales to China Citing several people familiar with the matter, Axios said the memo is based on US surveillance of Alice Huang and on an investigation into suspected chip smuggling by Megaspeed, and that it was [drafted under the oversight of Secretary of State Marco Rubio](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/nvidia-jensen-huang-investigation) and reached Lutnick in May, before President Donald Trump's trip to Beijing. Who sent it to him has not been reported. Megaspeed has said that inspections by Nvidia, Malaysia's trade ministry and the department's Bureau of Industry and Security found no evidence of illegal chip transfers. The department did not comment on the memo. The bureau maintains the Entity List and licenses sales of Nvidia's H200 chip to Chinese buyers. On 14 May, the first day of Trump's talks in Beijing, Reuters reported that the department had cleared about 10 Chinese companies to buy the chip. Neither the date the memo reached Lutnick nor the dates of those approvals have been reported. ## Bessent Asked Lutnick Why Megaspeed Is Not on the Entity List > "How come Megaspeed isn't on the entities list?" > — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to a person briefed on the meeting Bessent put the question to Lutnick in the White House Situation Room, according to a person briefed on the meeting, and Lutnick replied, "I don't know. I'll look into it." People familiar with the matter told Axios that White House and intelligence officials have pressed Lutnick and his advisers to act on Megaspeed since the fall of 2025, and that Lutnick spent the past year undoing their efforts, partly out of fear of escalating the trade war with China. The department, the Treasury and the White House did not comment, and neither Lutnick nor Bessent has spoken publicly about the meeting. ## The White House Disputes Reports That Rubio Warned Trump About Huang on the Way to Beijing Rubio warned Trump about Huang aboard Air Force One on the way to Beijing in May, after learning that Trump had invited Huang to join the trip at the last minute, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. A US government official confirmed to the paper that Rubio had briefed the president on the issue. CNN, citing a source familiar with the matter, also reported that Rubio briefed Trump on the intelligence during the trip. A White House official told the network, "These sources have no idea what they're talking about." Trump had said on Monday that intelligence officials may have raised the warning with him but that he did not remember it. "Certainly, it didn't make much of an impact on me," he said. ## A Blacklisted Chinese University Bought Two Nvidia H200 Chips Through a Domestic Supplier Northwestern Polytechnical University, which has been on the Entity List since 2001, bought two H200 chips for 874,700 yuan, about $123,000, from a Chinese supplier that is not on the list, according to a 21 October procurement notice reported by Reuters on Wednesday. The university's cybersecurity school also signed two seven-month contracts in January to rent servers with eight H200 chips each. The department did not lift the separate restrictions on organizations on the Entity List when it began licensing H200 sales to approved Chinese buyers in January, and safeguards are required to stop blacklisted organizations and military users from reaching the chips remotely. How the supplier obtained the chips has not been reported. Nvidia, the university and the Bureau of Industry and Security did not respond to Reuters. ## Nvidia Shares Rise Less Than Other Chip Stocks on the Day Huang's Reply to the House Is Due Huang has until Wednesday to [accept or propose another date](https://chinaselectcommittee.house.gov/media/press-releases/moolenaar-mast-and-crawford-seek-briefing-from-jensen-huang-on-ties-to-chinese-intelligence-asset) for a closed-door briefing on 18 November requested by three Republican House committee chairs. By Wednesday afternoon, neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly. Brian Mast, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was asked on Tuesday whether he would subpoena Huang if he did not respond by Wednesday. "Absolutely," he said. By early afternoon in New York, Nvidia shares were up about 4.8% at $176.90, recovering part of [the ground they lost on Monday and Tuesday](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/nvidia-stock-falls-second-day), while the PHLX Semiconductor index was up 7.6%, AMD 9.4%, Broadcom 6.5%, Micron 13.8% and CoreWeave 27%. Chip and AI stocks rallied after CoreWeave, which rents out computing power that runs on Nvidia chips, reported third-quarter revenue of $3.66 billion, up from $1.37 billion a year earlier, raised its revenue forecast for 2026 to between $13.0 billion and $13.3 billion and put its revenue backlog at about $132.5 billion at the end of September. Nvidia is still 14.4% below its close on 3 November, the day of the midterm elections. ## FAQ **Q: How did Howard Lutnick make his money?** Lutnick made his fortune at Cantor Fitzgerald, the New York financial services firm. He became its chief executive in 1991 and its chairman in 1996, and he also ran its affiliate BGC Group. He left Cantor when the Senate confirmed him as Commerce Secretary in February 2025. In that job he oversees the Bureau of Industry and Security, which licenses chip exports to China and maintains the Entity List. **Q: What does being on the Entity List mean?** Anyone who wants to send goods, software or technology covered by US export rules to a company or organization on the Entity List needs a license from the US Department of Commerce first, and the department usually starts from the position that it will refuse. The list is maintained by the department's Bureau of Industry and Security. Northwestern Polytechnical University has been on it since 2001. Megaspeed is not on it, and adding the company would mean that anyone shipping it US chips needed a license. **Q: Is Megaspeed a real company?** Yes. Megaspeed was set up in Singapore in 2015 under the name 7Road International and was renamed in 2023, when the Chinese game company 7Road split off its overseas business. Its business is buying Nvidia chips and renting their computing power to customers, among them Alibaba. Its sister company in Malaysia bought Nvidia-based AI equipment worth at least $4.8 billion between mid-2024 and early 2026. Singapore police said in October that their investigation into Megaspeed is ongoing, and no one has been charged.