Accusations of anti-competitive behavior in the AI chip field against NVIDIA, France fires the first shot in anti-monopoly

According to informed sources, the French antitrust regulatory agency plans to accuse NVIDIA of anti-competitive behavior, becoming the first country to take antitrust action against NVIDIA.

Last September, French law enforcement agencies conducted a surprise inspection of the graphics card industry to obtain more information about potential abuses of market dominance. At the time, they did not confirm that the company was NVIDIA, but NVIDIA later admitted that France and other agencies were reviewing its business practices.

Sources said that last year's surprise inspection was the result of a broad investigation into the cloud computing industry. As the world's largest artificial intelligence and computer graphics card manufacturer, NVIDIA saw a surge in chip demand after the release of the generative AI application ChatGPT, which attracted close attention from antitrust agencies in Europe and the United States.

Currently, both the French regulatory agency and NVIDIA have declined to comment on this matter. In a regulatory filing in February this year, NVIDIA stated that regulatory authorities in the EU and France had requested information about its graphics card products. "Our position in the AI-related market has attracted more attention from regulatory agencies around the world," NVIDIA said at the time.

It is reported that the French antitrust agency has been investigating market participants to understand NVIDIA's key role in AI processors, pricing policies, chip shortages, and their impact on prices. A report released by the French regulatory agency last Friday on competition in generative artificial intelligence mentioned the risk of chip suppliers abusing their power.

The report expressed concerns about the industry's reliance on NVIDIA's CUDA chip programming software, as it is the only system fully compatible with the GPUs needed for accelerated computing. In addition, the report also mentioned concerns about NVIDIA's recent investment in CoreWeave, a cloud service provider focused on AI.

Companies that violate French antitrust rules face fines of up to 10% of their global annual revenue, but they can also offer concessions to avoid penalties. The largest fine imposed by the agency since 2011 was €1.24 billion (US$1.33 billion) in 2020. Of this, €1.1 billion was imposed on Apple, with the remainder imposed on two distributors.

In Brussels, the European Commission has been informally gathering opinions to understand whether NVIDIA has also violated its antitrust rules, but has not yet launched a formal investigation into anti-competitive behavior.

In November last year, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that NVIDIA's dominant position was exacerbating inequality between countries and stifling fair competition. He pointed out that 92% of GPUs come from NVIDIA. "If you want to have fair competition, you need a lot of private companies, not the possibility of one company controlling all device sales," Le Maire said.

Meanwhile, a source familiar with the situation revealed that the US Department of Justice is leading an investigation into NVIDIA, with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reviewing large tech companies.

In response to France's antitrust action, NVIDIA's stock price fell more than 3.8% in early trading on Monday, but later rebounded and was down 0.32% at noon, trading at $123.15. NVIDIA's stock price has more than doubled since the beginning of this year, pushing the company's market value to over $3 trillion