In Malaysia’s lush southern peninsula, a data center known as A201 is set to open next year, packed with hundreds of millions of dollars in Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence servers.
The data center plans to supply this computing power to a Chinese tech giant. The setup is legal and profitable. It will also sidestep U.S. rules that ban sales of the most advanced A.I. chips directly to Chinese firms.
The company operating the data center is a client of Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm formerly led by Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, who handed off leadership of it to his sons. Mr. Lutnick is now writing the rules that would have a substantial effect on the data center’s business.
Mr. Lutnick has been seen as a force slowing rules that would clamp down on the sale of Nvidia chips to data centers like A201, which sit outside China but provide A.I. computing power to Chinese firms.
The Trump administration, concerned about ceding the country’s advantage in A.I., bans the sale of cutting-edge chips to China. But it has been embroiled in an internal debate for much of the past two years over how far to go in limiting chip sales to data centers in Southeast Asia. On one side of the debate are China hawks, who see the data centers as a way for Beijing to do an end run around the chip sales ban. On the other are officials, most prominently Mr. Lutnick, who are pushing against going too far in limiting the ability of U.S. companies like Nvidia to sell their products in Asia.
Recently, Mr. Lutnick has been advocating a less stringent version of those controls under consideration, which could cut back on Nvidia’s business by giving the U.S. government more oversight of chip sales to international data centers. It is the latest example of Mr. Lutnick’s soft touch on chip regulation, which has prompted criticism from lawmakers and others in the administration.
Cantor Fitzgerald has had business dealings with several data center companies in Southeast Asia that cater to Chinese clients, and could be affected by the regulations Mr. Lutnick is drafting, a review by The New York Times has found.
Cantor Fitzgerald served as a designated sales agent for an equity offering of up to $1 billion this year by Bitdeer, the Singaporean firm that will operate data center A201, in addition to having other financial ties to various global data center businesses. The relationship between the two companies began as early as 2024, when Cantor Fitzgerald helped Bitdeer arrange a stock offering of up to $250 million.
Mr. Lutnick steered Cantor Fitzgerald for decades, before recusing himself when he joined the Trump administration last year. The Commerce Department says Mr. Lutnick has complied with all ethics agreements, and his former business is now run by his sons.
These dealings are just a tiny portion of Cantor’s business, which stretches from investment banking and trading to real estate. Other investment banks have similar partnerships, and there is no evidence that Cantor’s investments influenced Mr. Lutnick’s deliberations.
But the overlapping relationships are the latest indication of the potential conflicts that exist given Mr. Lutnick’s role in shaping rules around U.S. technology exports. And they demonstrate how the U.S. ban on selling chips directly to China has led to an explosion of data centers in Southeast Asia aimed at Chinese customers. It is now up to Mr. Lutnick to decide whether to tighten the rules in ways that would cut off this avenue.
In the administration, Mr. Lutnick has been seen as one of Nvidia’s strongest champions.
His department has been increasingly criticized in recent months for giving Nvidia unusual access to rule-making and investigations, and standing in the way of sanctions on Nvidia’s customers.
The issue has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks with the scandal over the Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang’s affair with a woman the U.S. government deemed to be a Chinese intelligence asset.
The woman, Alice Huang, had led Megaspeed, a firm that set up data centers in Southeast Asia to serve Chinese companies. The U.S. government is also investigating Megaspeed for illegally smuggling chips into China.
The United States in late 2022 started banning exports of Nvidia’s advanced chips directly to China, out of concern the chips could help Beijing crack American encryption and design new weapons.
But while Chinese firms cannot buy Nvidia’s most advanced chips outright, nothing stops them from renting those chips in data centers in Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand.
The arrangement is viewed by many in Washington as a harmful loophole. While some argue that the sales help U.S. leadership in technology, many in the administration have argued for clamping down, and Congress is considering a bipartisan bill to do so.
In its final weeks, the Biden administration issued global rules to restrict the ability of Chinese companies to remotely access U.S. chips. But President Trump revoked those rules when he came into office, arguing that they stifled American business and innovation.
Trump officials said they would introduce a new rule to replace the Biden ones. But they have struggled to reconcile competing views in the administration about how aggressive the rules should be.
Mr. Lutnick has been described as delaying or deferring these technology controls at several points in the past year, arguing that they could affect companies like Nvidia, or U.S. trade relations with China and other countries.
People familiar with the discussions say the Commerce Department has pushed for a more scaled-back version of the rule. The department has proposed applying regulations to a handful of countries — Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa and Norway. Others in the administration have wanted global coverage.
The proposal was first reported by The Information.
The Commerce Department proposal would also apply only to future shipments of advanced chips, exempting data centers already filled with American technology. Companies would need to notify the government if Chinese customers use their data centers to train A.I. models. But they would not automatically need to obtain a license.
The Commerce Department had also argued for the rules to kick in when companies are using a larger amount of computing power, meaning fewer activities by Chinese companies would be regulated.
Chris McGuire, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Biden administration official, predicted that Chinese companies would find ways to sidestep the more narrow controls the Commerce Department is proposing.
“If you’re only restricting remote access to data centers in certain countries, then China will just rent from the data centers outside those countries,” he said.
Nvidia had been one of Cantor’s largest stock positions early last year, but last fall, the firm began steadily selling off shares. Cantor holds those shares on behalf of clients, not as part of its proprietary investment portfolio.
Still, Cantor Fitzgerald continued to help arrange billions of dollars of financing for industries ranging from data centers to cryptocurrency that depend on a steady supply of computing from Nvidia.
That includes Bitdeer, which is building out the Malaysian data center it expects to generate $1.7 billion in revenue over five years, according to a company statement.
That data center will likely serve Tencent, a Chinese internet giant that would be able to gain access to Nvidia’s most advanced A.I. servers, according to a person with knowledge of the arrangement. Bitdeer is part of Nvidia’s partner network, a program for companies that work closely with the chipmaker.
Bitdeer hosts a Chinese language website that lets customers rent A.I. chips and gain access to Chinese open source A.I. models through data centers in Malaysia, Canada and elsewhere. The Johor facility is one of five data centers the company plans to open in Malaysia in the coming years, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Cantor holds a stake in Bitdeer through its investment in Tether, the crypto company. It is far from the only American financial heavyweight investing in overseas data centers. Bain Capital, Citadel and Blackstone have all poured money into A.I. computing clusters across the region.
Cantor also previously provided financial services to Gorilla Technology, which is building data centers in Thailand and Indonesia, and has a contract to provide A.I. computing to Freyr AI, a Singaporean data center firm that corporate filings and job ads indicate has ties to China.
Cantor has worked with other Nvidia partners globally, including IREN, an Australian cloud computing company, and Lancium, a Texas data center developer.
A Commerce Department spokeswoman said that Mr. Lutnick makes policy decisions based on the best interests of the United States. He does not discuss department matters with his sons, nor do they discuss Cantor Fitzgerald business with him, she added.
Cantor Fitzgerald declined to comment. Bitdeer did not reply to a request for comment.
Mr. Lutnick, as of October 2025, transferred his remaining ownership stake in Cantor to his family. Before that, he had been given what the White House had called a “limited waiver” that allowed him to participate in certain decisions that could have “a direct and predictable effect on Cantor Fitzgerald,” exempting him from a federal criminal law that would otherwise have required him to entirely recuse himself from these discussions.
Even after Mr. Lutnick finished transferring his ownership stake to his sons late last year, he still had to abide by an ethics rule prohibiting federal employees from using their public office for their private gain or the gain of friends and relatives.
The Times reported last year that Mr. Lutnick was promoting data center projects that worked with his family firms. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and two dozen other Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation.
Maggie Haberman and Eric Lipton contributed reporting.