French regulators raid Nvidia amid fears of anticompetitive practices in graphics card industry French regulators raid Nvidia amid fears of anticompetitive practices in graphics card industry
The artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaker, Nvidia, has come under regulatory attention due to its dominance of the sector.
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Updated: Sep. 29, 2023 at 10:52 am UTC
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French regulators recently raided a corporation involved in anticompetitive activities within the graphics card industry. A Sept. 28 report from The Wall Street Journal identified the corporation as Nvidia.
In a Sept. 27 press statement, France’s antitrust agency Autorité de la Concurrence revealed it received authorization from a judge to raid “the premises of a company suspected of having implemented anticompetitive practices in the graphics cards sector.”
Meanwhile, Autorité stated that its raid of the company does not “pre-suppose the existence of a breach of the law which could be imputed to the company involved in the alleged practices.”
Nvidia has yet to respond to CryptoSlate’s request for comment as of press time.
Cloud computing concerns
The raid was part of broader concerns that cloud-computing companies were using their access to computing power to exclude smaller competitors. It said:
“Competition authorities will have to monitor that established players do not hinder the development of smaller or new players based on these technologies.”
In June, the regulator published a report that showed that Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure controlled more than 70% of the market.
According to the regulator, these companies, referred to as hyperscalers, are in a position to hinder their competition development as they were responsible for around 80% of the spending on public cloud infrastructures and applications in 2021.
However, Autorité stated that it has the tools to protect competition within the space and ensure proper regulations.
While the above report does not mention Nvidia, the chipmaker has come under the authorities’ attention because it is the dominant player in its sector, scoring notable partnerships with the aforementioned companies to
Observers have suggested it could control as much as 90% of the market when it begins to launch newer, more powerful hardware versions.
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