According to reports, institutions in France will bring an antitrust lawsuit against Nvidia, which will be the first enforcement agency globally to take antitrust action against the company. The European Commission is said to be informally collecting opinions to determine whether Nvidia has violated antitrust regulations, but has not yet launched a formal investigation. Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice is reportedly leading an investigation into Nvidia.
According to sources cited by the media, the French regulatory agency will file an antitrust lawsuit against Nvidia, which will be the world's first law enforcement agency to take antitrust action against the company.
As a result of this news, Nvidia's stock price fell nearly 4% on Monday, but later recovered all lost ground.
As early as the end of September last year, there were media reports that the French competition watchdog had raided Nvidia's office in the country on the grounds that the chip giant was suspected of engaging in anti-competitive behavior. French regulators confirmed the raid at the time, but did not disclose what behavior was being investigated or which company was being targeted, only that it belonged to the graphics card industry.
However, in November last year, Nvidia confirmed that France was investigating its commercial activities. In addition, the US, UK, and EU are also reviewing Nvidia's business.
It is reported that the European Commission is informally gathering opinions to determine whether Nvidia has violated antitrust regulations, but has not yet launched a formal investigation. At the same time, the US Department of Justice is said to be leading the investigation into Nvidia.
In November last year, French Finance Minister Lemaire said that Nvidia's dominant position in AI chip field is causing increasing inequality among countries and stifling fair competition.
Lemaire cites data showing that 92% of GPUs come from Nvidia. He said: "If you want fair competition, you need many private companies, not one company that may sell all devices."
The French regulator last Friday issued a report on generative AI competition, citing the risks of chip suppliers abusing their market dominance.
The report points out the industry's dependence on Nvidia's CUDA chip programming software and expresses concern about this, as it is the only system fully compatible with GPUs required for acceleration computing. The report also mentioned that Nvidia has recently invested in AI cloud computing service providers like Coreweave, which also concerns regulators.
Under France's antitrust regulations, if found to be in violation of antitrust laws, relevant companies may face fines of up to 10% of their global annual revenue, but they can also make concessions to avoid fines.