NVIDIA in France’s sights: company risks huge fine

The Autorité d la concurrence, France’s antitrust body, appears to be intent on charging the NVIDIA of anticompetitive business practices, according to sources consulted by Reuters. If confirmed, the charges would be formalized 9 months after the agency visited NVIDIA’s offices in France.

Dominance in the AI ​​chip market is the key issue

The basis of the agency’s accusation would be the segment that catapulted NVIDIA to the list of the most valuable companies in the world: the artificial intelligence market. A segment in which the company is responsible for 88%, dominating the supply of custom chips that equip the supercomputers of OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, etc.

On the last sixty days (28), the Competition Authority published a report analyzing the state of the AI ​​market and investigating the question of whether there is plurality in terms of competition. In the document, the agency expressed concern about the risk of abuse by chip suppliers. Market in which NVIDIA is a protagonist.

In particular, the document highlighted “the industry’s dependence on NVIDIA’s CUDA chip programming software (the only one that is 100% compatible with NVIDIA GPUs and which has become essential for accelerated computing). The French body also raised a warning about NVIDIA’s investments in cloud computing companies such as CoreWeave, partnerships that could inflate the market performance of the company led by Jensen Huang.

The document also outlines potential risks of policies implemented by AI manufacturers:

• price monopoly;
• production restrictions;
• unfair contractual conditions/conduct

Given this scenario, NVIDIA could face fines representing up to 10% of its annual global revenue.

NVIDIA has yet to officially comment on the matter.

Some companies have been betting on developing their own chips to rival NVIDIA in the AI ​​market solutions segment. One example is Cerebra Systems, which has the support of OpenAI.