(News) NVIDIA could face antitrust charges in France, US and EU close behind

---

---

According to a report by Reuters, the French antitrust authority plans to file a criminal complaint against NVIDIA on July 1, accusing it of anti-competitive practices. France will be the first country to take such action against NVIDIA.

The French competition regulator raided NVIDIA’s local offices in September last year. At the time, it did not disclose details of the investigation or the name of the company involved, only saying it concerned the graphics card sector.

However, according to a previous report by Bloomberg, NVIDIA claimed that the French agency collected information from them regarding their activities and competition in the graphics card and cloud service provider markets as part of an ongoing investigation into competition in those markets.

Sources cited in the Reuters report indicated that last year’s raid was part of a broader investigation into cloud computing. With global demand for chips surging following the emergence of ChatGPT, NVIDIA, as the world’s largest maker of AI and computer graphics cards, has naturally attracted intense scrutiny from antitrust regulators in Europe and the United States.

NVIDIA has previously disclosed in regulatory filings that both EU and French regulators have requested information about its graphics card products. The French antitrust watchdog has been actively investigating NVIDIA’s key role in AI processors, its pricing policy, chip shortages and the impact on pricing.

Last Friday, French authorities released a report on competition in generative AI, highlighting the risk of abuse of power by chip suppliers. The report raised concerns about the chip industry’s heavy reliance on NVIDIA’s CUDA software for programming chips. In addition, NVIDIA’s focus on investing in AI cloud services provider CoreWeave has also raised serious concerns among authorities.

Companies found to be in breach of French antitrust rules could face fines of up to 10% of their global annual revenues, sources said, although they may choose to make some concessions to avoid the penalties.

In addition, the European Commission is currently collecting informal views to determine whether NVIDIA has breached antitrust rules, although it has not yet opened a formal investigation into anticompetitive conduct.

On the other hand, the New York Times reported on June 5 that the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reached an agreement led by senior officials from both agencies over the past week. The DOJ will investigate whether NVIDIA violated antitrust laws, while the FTC will investigate the conduct of OpenAI and Microsoft.

read more

(Image source: NVIDIA)