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Nvidia's French Offices Raided in Cloud-Computing Competition Inquiry

Neon Xenon

Member

(Reuters) -France's competition authority raided Nvidia's local offices this week on suspicion the chipmaker engaged in anticompetitive practices, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The French competition authority, which disclosed the dawn raid on Wednesday, did not say what practices it was investigating or which company it had targeted, beyond saying it was in the "graphics cards sector."

The French competition authority said that its operation this week followed a broader inquiry into the cloud-computing sector. The broader inquiry revolves around concerns that cloud-computing companies could use their access to computing power to exclude smaller competitors.

This week's operation had targeted Nvidia, which is the world's largest maker of chips used both for artificial intelligence and for computer graphics, the WSJ report added, citing people familiar with the raid. Chips originally made for computer graphics are suited for AI-related computing.


(Bloomberg) -- French antitrust enforcers raided the offices of a business suspected of engaging in “anticompetitive practices in the graphics cards sector,” targeting a company that the Wall Street Journal identified as Nvidia Corp.

“Raids do not presuppose the existence of a breach of the law,” France’s competition authority said in a statement on its website, “which only a full investigation into the merits of the case could establish, if appropriate.”

The agency didn’t cite Nvidia by name, and the Santa Clara, California-based company declined to comment on the matter.

The move suggests Nvidia’s dominant role in supplying chips for artificial intelligence tasks is coming under closer scrutiny. The company’s graphics processor units, which first became popular in video games, are increasingly essential to new systems that are used to train large language models and other types of AI software.
 

GHG

Gold Member
What they found:

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