The French Autorité de la concurrence (Competition Authority) is reportedly looking to raise anti-competition charges against Nvidia.
According to Reuters, the Competition Authority is concerned about the monopoly Nvidia holds over the artificial intelligence (AI) market. The report cites people with direct knowledge of the matter.
If charges are made, they will be less than a year after the Competition Authority raided Nvidia's offices in France.
In February 2024, the Authority launched an inquiry into the "competitive functioning of the generative AI sector"
In a recent report, the Competition Authority noted concern surrounding the sector's dependence on Nvidia's CUDA chip programming software, the cost of Nvidia's GPUs (or its competitors), and recent announcements of Nvidia's investment in cloud service providers such as CoreWeave.
The report further noted the risk of chip providers engaging in price fixing, production restrictions, and unfair contract conditions or behaviors, though did not specifically accuse Nvidia.
Nvidia's success in the AI boom has been evident in the past few months. In May 2023, the company was valued at $1 trillion. This grew to $2 trillion in February 2024, and $3 trillion in June.
Should the French Competition Authority charge Nvidia, it would be the first regulator to do so. If found guilty, Nvidia risks a maximum penalty of 10 percent of its global revenue in fines.
Nvidia is also under investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission. In June 2024, an antitrust probe was launched into the company alongside Microsoft and OpenAI regarding the trio's influence on the AI industry.
