Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pressed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at a White House Situation Room meeting on why Nvidia customer Megaspeed had not been added to the Commerce Department’s Entity List, Axios reported on 11 November, citing sources familiar. The New York Times reported the same day that Bessent confronted Lutnick last week over why the administration had not restricted advanced chip sales to Megaspeed.
The Federal Register shows no rule adding any entity to the Entity List since 9 October 2025, 398 days before 11 November 2026, by our count of the Bureau of Industry and Security rules we searched. The eCFR copy of the list, current to 9 November, has no entry for Megaspeed.
Business Pill · GPUs Explained
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on why AI runs on GPUs, the export-controlled chips at the centre of the Megaspeed reports. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss the reports.
The key insight: As we read it, the reported exchange turns one company into a test of the listing process: the Treasury Secretary asked why Megaspeed is not on the Entity List, while the Federal Register shows no Entity List additions for 398 days, by our count.
The meeting took place on the Thursday after the midterm elections, according to Axios. “How come Megaspeed isn’t on the entities list?” Bessent asked, according to a source briefed on the meeting, and Lutnick replied: “I don’t know. I’ll look into it.”
Axios also reported that Commerce Undersecretary Jeff Kessler was repeatedly warned about Megaspeed in deputy meetings and deferred to Lutnick, saying: “That’s a decision for the secretary.” White House and intelligence officials have pressed Lutnick and his top advisers to act against Megaspeed since the fall of 2025, sources told Axios.
Spokespeople for Treasury and Commerce could not be immediately reached for comment, Axios said. Axios also noted that the Financial Times had reported the department was delaying efforts to blacklist Megaspeed despite several US agencies pushing it to do so.
Days between Federal Register rules from the Bureau of Industry and Security that add entities to the US Entity List, from January 2025. The last addition rule, 90 FR 48193, was published on 9 October 2025; 398 days had passed by 11 November 2026, against 172 days between the 28 March and 16 September 2025 additions. Day counts are our arithmetic.
What the Federal Register Shows
The last rule adding to the list is 90 FR 48193 of 9 October 2025, which added 29 entries, 26 entities and 3 addresses, under China (19), Turkey (9) and the United Arab Emirates (1). The later rules in the results we searched either remove Entity List entries or suspend a related rule; none adds an entity.
On 12 November 2025, BIS removed one Chinese entity and six aliases of another, and suspended for one year its rule extending Entity List restrictions to companies at least 50 percent owned by listed entities. On 24 August 2026 it removed one entity under Turkey and two addresses of Arrow Electronics (Hong Kong).
On 9 November 2026, two days before the reports, BIS extended the suspension of that 50 percent ownership rule through 10 January 2027. BIS said when it issued the rule in September 2025 that it addressed “diversion concerns involving entities on the Entity List”.
Entities added to the Entity List per quarter, from the abstracts of Bureau of Industry and Security rules in the Federal Register: 180 in 2025 across seven rules and none in the 2026 rules we found. Quarter totals are our arithmetic; the 9 October 2025 rule’s 29 entries include 3 addresses.
Our Numbers
The 398 days since the last addition rule are about 2.3 times the 172 days between the 28 March and 16 September 2025 additions, the longest earlier gap between addition rules in our 2025 count, by our arithmetic.
Rule abstracts in the Federal Register list 180 entities added across seven rules in 2025, 140 of them in the four rules published from 28 March onward, by our arithmetic. The rules we found for 2026 add none.
As we read the timing, the reports came two days after BIS extended the suspension of its 50 percent affiliates rule through 10 January 2027, a rule BIS said addressed diversion concerns involving listed entities.
As we read the count, the pace of listings changed: 180 entities were added across seven rules in 2025 and none in the 2026 rules we found, by our arithmetic.
Bureau of Industry and Security, 9 November 2026
“This final rule extends the suspension through January 10, 2027.”
Three Implications
FOR THE COMMERCE DEPARTMENT White House and intelligence officials have pressed Lutnick and his top advisers to act against Megaspeed since the fall of 2025, sources told Axios.
FOR NVIDIA Axios describes Megaspeed as an Nvidia customer; the eCFR text of the Entity List, current to 9 November 2026, has no entry for Megaspeed.
FOR EXPORT-CONTROL POLICY The September 2025 interim final rule, now suspended, states that any entity at least 50 percent owned by one or more listed entities will itself be subject to Entity List restrictions.
The framework argues that the AI supply chain is “creating geopolitical leverage that operates independently of who has the best models”.
As we read it, an Entity List entry is how that leverage is applied to a single buyer, and the reported exchange is about whether it will be applied to one Nvidia customer. The framework predates the reports and does not discuss them.
What Is Not Established
We read the Axios report in full, but only the headline and summary of the Times article, whose text we could not open. The Axios account rests on unnamed sources, and we could not see whom the Times relied on. Neither Treasury, Commerce nor the White House had commented in what we read.
Why Megaspeed has not been listed, and whether a listing is being prepared, is not established. Our count covers Bureau of Industry and Security rules in the Federal Register search results we reviewed, and the eCFR text current to 9 November.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
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This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a supply story, and last week as a credit story. This week it was priced as a permission story, and the answer arrived as a cost, not a ban.
Two outlets report that the Treasury Secretary pressed the Commerce Secretary on why Megaspeed is not on the Entity List. The Federal Register shows no Entity List additions for 398 days, by our count, while the diversion-related rule on affiliates stays suspended into January 2027.
A note on sourcing. We read the Axios report of 11 November 2026 in full. We read only the headline and RSS summary of the New York Times article of the same day, by Ana Swanson and Tripp Mickle, because its text sat behind a captcha. Entity List counts come from the Federal Register API (all Bureau of Industry and Security rules published from 1 September 2025 to 11 November 2026, and Entity List rules from July 2024) and the eCFR text of the list current to 9 November 2026; day counts, ratios and totals are our arithmetic.
Axios said Treasury and Commerce spokespeople could not be immediately reached; we did not contact them for this piece. Some claims in the Axios report attributed to unnamed sources are not repeated here.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
