France’s competitors watchdog has raided the native places of work of chipmaker Nvidia whereas investigating anti-competitive practices within the graphics playing cards sector with a concentrate on cloud computing.
Whereas the competitors watchdog didn’t affirm the id of the entity being investigated or the observe in query, a report from The Wall Road Journal cited sources saying that the raids performed focused Nvidia.
The watchdog, nonetheless, confirmed that the operation was a results of it attempting to analyze the graphics playing cards sector as a part of an expanded examine to know anti-competitive practices within the cloud computing sector. The examine, in line with the watchdog, was began in January 2022.
Nvidia’s rise to prominence, submit the proliferation of generative AI, as the highest chip provider to massive software program distributors and cloud service suppliers, comparable to Salesforce, ServiceNow, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft, may very well be among the many high causes for the watchdog’s curiosity within the chipmaker.
In February, Nvidia introduced plans to ship its DGX Cloud to Oracle, Google Cloud, and Microsoft. The DGX Cloud combines the corporate’s GPU-based compute programs known as DGX Pods with an AI enterprise software program stack.
The chipmaker blew previous expectations for its most up-to-date quarter and numbers disclosed confirmed that enterprise gross sales now represent 76% of Nvidia’s complete income. Specialists and analysts additionally imagine that Nvidia is “uniquely suited to learn from the expansion of AI in {hardware}.”
Nvidia’s rivals within the generative AI-processing silicon area embrace the likes of AMD, a startup named Ampere, and the cloud service supplier themselves who’re creating their very own chips for supporting next-generation AI workloads.
Oracle’s current $400 million funding into Ampere for generative AI workload-supporting chips additionally underlines the demand for such processors. Oracle has additionally agreed to pay over $100 million for getting such chips this month.
Raids not proof of guilt for the chipmaker
The French competitors watchdog has famous that although raids have been performed within the graphics playing cards sector, the searches themselves weren’t proof of guilt or any wrongdoing.
“Such daybreak raids don’t pre-suppose the existence of a breach of the legislation, which may very well be imputed to the corporate concerned within the alleged practices, which solely a full investigation into the deserves of the case might set up, if acceptable,” an announcement from the watchdog learn.
Nonetheless, in the previous few weeks, massive know-how corporations have attracted the eye of anti-competitive businesses in alleged complaints of using unfair practices for conducting enterprise.
Earlier this month, Alphabet-owned Google was accused of making a monopoly by means of using exclusivity contracts with gadget producers and software program suppliers that make Google the default search engine for a given gadget or platform. The trial, which echoes the turn-of-the-century Microsoft antitrust case in a number of respects, continues to be ongoing.
This week additionally noticed the US Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) file a lawsuit towards Amazon, alleging that the corporate has been partaking in quite a lot of “interlocking anticompetitive and unfair methods to illegally keep its monopoly energy.”
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