It is reported that Nvidia will face antitrust charges in France, with a maximum fine of 44.2 billion!

01 AI chips

Nvidia's monopoly in the field of AI chips has attracted great attention from regulators. According to foreign media reports, the French antitrust regulator will file a lawsuit against Nvidia for suspected anti-competitive behavior.

According to Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, according to people familiar with the matter, the French antitrust regulator will file a lawsuit against AI chip giant Nvidia for suspected anti-competitive behavior, which will make it the first law enforcement agency to file a lawsuit against Nvidia.

In September 2023, French law enforcement agencies raided the graphics card industry to obtain more information about potential abuse of market dominance. Sources said that the raid was aimed at Nvidia and was a broader investigation and supervision of the cloud computing field.

Nvidia later admitted that France and other agencies were reviewing its business practices. But Nvidia emphasized that the French competition authority conducted a raid as part of a thorough investigation of the substantive process of the case and did not mean illegal.

As the world's largest manufacturer of artificial intelligence and computer graphics cards, Nvidia's chip demand surged after the release of the generative artificial intelligence application ChatGPT. According to data from January 29, 2024, Nvidia's market share in the global artificial intelligence chip market is expected to reach 90%, setting a new record. At the same time, research institutions predict that Nvidia's AI GPU sales in 2024 will reach 1.5 million to 2 million, nearly three times the sales in 2023.

02 ChatGPT

As mentioned above, the demand for chips of the world's largest AI and computer graphics chip manufacturer has increased significantly after the release of ChatGPT, and its market value and performance have also risen, but its monopoly in the field of AI chips has also attracted the attention of regulators.

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.

Last November, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire also expressed concerns that Nvidia's dominance in the market has led to increased inequality between countries and limited fair competition. He pointed out that 92% of GPUs come from Nvidia and emphasized that the market needs multiple companies to participate to ensure fair competition.

French regulators mentioned the risk of abuse by chip suppliers in a report on generative AI competition released last Friday. According to French antitrust regulations, if a company is found to have violated antitrust laws, it may face fines of up to 10% of its global annual turnover. If calculated based on Nvidia's revenue in fiscal 2024, the fine could be as high as $6.09 billion (about 44.281 billion yuan). However, the company can also make concessions to avoid fines.

Previously, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) were also working together to investigate Nvidia's compliance with antitrust laws. According to the relevant agreement, the U.S. Department of Justice will lead the investigation into whether Nvidia has violated antitrust laws, while the Federal Trade Commission will be responsible for investigating the behavior of OpenAI and Microsoft.

In addition, the European Commission also uses informal means to collect opinions to investigate and collect Nvidia's potential abuse of its market dominance in the GPU field to determine whether it is necessary to intervene in the future.

Nvidia also stated in a regulatory filing that regulators in the European Union and France had asked the company to provide relevant information on its graphics card products, and pointed out that its position in AI-related markets has attracted the attention of regulators around the world.

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