The French government is preparing to raid NVIDIA’s offices in France and accuse it of anti-competitive business practices.
The French government has raided NVIDIA’s offices in France and is set to charge the US-based GPU leader with anti-competitive business practices. NVIDIA’s offices in France have been targeted by the French antitrust regulator, and the company is expected to be accused of anti-competitive practices.
Antitrust Investigation Into NVIDIA
The report, from Reuters and people with “direct knowledge of the matter,” makes it the first government to take on NVIDIA. The French authority has a statement of objections or timetable, following previous raids on its graphics card business in September 2023 that Reuters sources said “targeted NVIDIA.” Those raids were part of a “broader investigation into cloud computing.”
NVIDIA’s dominance in the GPU market, particularly in its AI GPU business, has caught France’s attention. This has been further strengthened over the past year by generative AI leaders OpenAI and ChatGPT, “triggering regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic,” Reuters reported.
A French observer working on the subject has expressed concern about the AI industry’s dependence on NVIDIA’s leading CUDA chip programming software, the only system 100% compatible with GPUs, which have become the cornerstone of HPC and AI. They also voiced concerns about NVIDIA’s recent investment in AI-focused cloud service providers, noting CoreWeave.
The potential fine could be up to 10% of their global annual turnover for violating French antitrust rules, but Reuters adds that they could also make concessions to “avoid penalties” that would be huge given that NVIDIA recently reached a financial market cap of $3.3 trillion. Reuters added that the US Justice Department is taking the lead in investigating NVIDIA, while it “splits” the Big Tech investigation with the Federal Trade Commission, according to a “source familiar with the matter”.