Cantor pares Nvidia stake while helping fund its ecosystem, as political heat rises

A smaller reported position, a louder conversation

Cantor Fitzgerald brought Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and other senior leaders to New York for investor meetings in late September. A few days later, on Oct. 3, Cantor analyst C.J. Muse and colleagues reiterated an overweight rating and a 350 dollar price target, writing, "We continue to view NVDA as the best risk/reward in our coverage."

The firm's filings told a different story about its reported holdings. By year-end 2024, Cantor said it held in excess of 3.5 million Nvidia shares valued at 479 million dollars. That share count was unchanged through September 2025, while the reported value rose 36% to 652 million dollars after the Trump administration, during the summer, took steps to relax limits on Nvidia's H20 sales to China.

A CNBC review of filings, excluding options, shows the position remained near that lower level on June 30 at 1.81 million shares. The next quarterly disclosure is due Monday.

The filings do not explain the decline or whether Cantor's total exposure changed. Nvidia's stock more than doubled from April 2025 lows by late October, then retreated, falling about 6.5% from the end of September to the end of March.

Still doing business across Nvidia's orbit

Cantor kept working across Nvidia's ecosystem even as its reported stake shrank. The bulk of the shares were recorded under CF Secured, a brokerage unit that employs stocks and derivatives to hedge client trades. During the same period, Cantor reported substantial Nvidia options positions that were heavily tilted toward puts, a tool that can offset a drop in the stock.

On May 7, Nvidia and the Australia-based cloud firm IREN unveiled a five-year, 3.4 billion dollar cloud agreement and a strategic tie-up granting Nvidia the option to invest as much as 2.1 billion dollars in IREN. Addressing investors on that day's quarterly earnings call, IREN's co-CEO Daniel Roberts said, "That's not a passive financial investment. Nvidia is a partner who wins as we deliver,".

Huang - absent from the original invite list - joined the delegation when the plane paused to refuel in Alaska. Axios reported that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had previously received a highly classified memo detailing worries about Huang's relationship.

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On May 12, IREN announced pricing for a convertible bond, which raised 3 billion dollars when the deal closed two days later. The syndicate included Cantor among seven bookrunners, with JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs also on the ticket. On May 14, the closing date, the Commerce Department discreetly authorized roughly 10 Chinese firms, including Alibaba and ByteDance, to purchase Nvidia's H200 chips, although some approvals came before the memo. The timing of IREN's engagement of Cantor, and the fees paid, remains unclear.

Politics, pressure and a growing optics problem

Axios reported that Lutnick repeatedly resisted those efforts.

Until Lutnick left Wall Street for the Commerce Department in February 2025, Cantor's disclosures showed Nvidia as its second-largest reported equity holding; only bitcoin investor MicroStrategy was bigger, which is now called Strategy.

Cantor said its own holdings in Nvidia were immaterial and that the positions shown in 13F filings were entered in the ordinary course for client swap transactions. The firm declined to answer other questions.

As scrutiny intensified, Cantor Chairman Brandon Lutnick publicly praised Nvidia's leadership. "Nvidia is one of the great companies on the planet, and they have an amazing leadership team," he told Fox Business on Wednesday.

What it means for your portfolio

In plain English: Cantor's reported Nvidia share count fell nearly in half even as the firm helped finance parts of Nvidia's network and stayed close to the company's leadership. Most reported shares sat in a hedging unit, and the firm disclosed sizable put positions. None of that answers why the reported count dropped, and Cantor has not said.

The bottom line: policy is now part of the Nvidia trade. Export approvals and enforcement steps can ripple through AI supply chains, and another Cantor filing due Monday could update one of the biggest Wall Street books tied to the chip giant. If your portfolio leans on Nvidia or its partners, keep an eye on both the filings and the policy moves.

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