U.S. Commerce Secretary Lutnick to appear at Senate hearing over Nvidia and Megaspeed controversy

According to a Commerce Department spokesperson, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has agreed to voluntarily appear at a Senate Banking Committee hearing in early December to be questioned about how the department handled AI chip export controls; committee chairman Tim Scott has written to Lutnick and recently resigned Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, asking both to appear separately at the hearing. At the center of the dispute is why the Commerce Department did not add Singaporean company Megaspeed to the Entity List, despite U.S. officials' concerns that the company smuggles advanced chips to China; Megaspeed is led by Alice Huang, who has been accused of being a Chinese spy and of having an affair with Jensen Huang. According to Axios, Lutnick received a highly classified memo warning about the relationship between Jensen Huang and Alice Huang before Trump's visit to China in mid-May, but the Commerce Department took no action against Megaspeed. Treasury Secretary Bessent publicly accused the Commerce Department of delay, saying that the Treasury Department, the Department of War and multiple other departments had for months supported adding Megaspeed to the Entity List, but "the pen is in the Commerce Department's hand."