Nvidia's French offices raided in cloud-computing competition inquiry

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Nvidia's French offices raided in cloud-computing competition inquiry

Sept 28 (Reuters) - France's competition authority raided Nvidia's (NVDA.O) local offices this week on suspicion the chipmaker engaged in anticompetitive practices, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The French competition authority, which disclosed the dawn raid on Wednesday, did not say what practices it was investigating or which company it had targeted, beyond saying it was in the "graphics cards sector."

The French competition authority said that its operation this week followed a broader inquiry into the cloud-computing sector. The broader inquiry revolves around concerns that cloud-computing companies could use their access to computing power to exclude smaller competitors.

This week's operation had targeted Nvidia, which is the world's largest maker of chips used both for artificial intelligence and for computer graphics, the WSJ report added, citing people familiar with the raid. Chips originally made for computer graphics are suited for AI-related computing.

Nvidia declined to comment, while the French competition authority did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Demand for Nvidia's chips surged in following the release of the generative AI application ChatGPT late last year. Through a combination of its chips and other hardware and its powerful software that runs them, Nvidia has achieved market share of around 80%.

French authorities have taken an aggressive approach against Big Tech in recent months. In September, France suspended sales of Apple's (AAPL.O) iPhone 12 and threatened a recall after it said it found the phone emitted radiation levels exceeding a limit. The move prompted Apple to release a software update for the French market.

Nvidia shares were up 1.4% at $430.65 late on Thursday afternoon.

Reporting by Samrhitha Arunasalam in Bengaluru and Max A. Cherney in San Francisco Editing by Shweta Agarwal and Matthew Lewis
 
Wow.....thats kind of nuts. This thread is going to turn into a shit show. Damn is all I can say.
 
Hmm, Nvidia possibly up to no good, will see if they find anything or not.
 
I have no knowledge with which to base an informed opinion on this, other than:

a.) I do know Nvidia is a shitty company prone to market manipulations, much like Intel back in the day, so it wouldn't surprise me if they have done something uncouth.

and

b.) I know European regulators (and particularly the French) are seething that the U.S. has a leadership role in tech, and have been putting unreasonable regulatory requirements in place with the express purpose of hurting American tech giants

So, honestly, my uninformed opinion here is that we are probably seeing a little from column a, and a little from column b.

Is there any way they can both lose here? That would probably be the best possible outcome.
 
I am sure this has nothing to do at all with Nvidia's huge LLM update that caused all the competing language models to go from almost viable to not even in the same ballpark.
The French government put a fair amount of money into Minstral AI, and they are doing good work, but they went from being just a bit slower to something like 1/6'th the speed. SO...

Timing wise that is a bit weird.
 
I'm sure we'll continue to hear all about this and won't turn into a forgotten nothingburger like how 'Nvidia being anticompetitive towards AIBs in China guys!', remember that? :)
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I know European regulators (and particularly the French) are seething that the U.S. has a leadership role in tech, and have been putting unreasonable regulatory requirements in place with the express purpose of hurting American tech giants
Click to expand...
Until you mentioned it, I hadn't considered this possibility. Thank you. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, but I can see how the Europeans may have political and legal motivations (rather than just one or the other).
 
If it was anyone other than Nvidia I might care lol. Of course you do it to one and everyone else is fair game, but I just can’t care right now.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Is there any way they can both lose here? That would probably be the best possible outcome.
Click to expand...

Well NVidia loses, because being the target of an investigation like this is a big time suck, and you've also got to do regular trainings so that people know what words to not email. And you have to discuss all those trainings outside of email or they'll get dragged into court, so that means expensive business lunches. I'm just going to assume they're the target of the investigation, because they probably would have been asked for stuff rather than raided if this was going against someone else.

The EU loses, because while fining american corps is great for the budget, it doesn't help them acheive their goal of having a dominant tech company based in the EU. There's lots of reasons that dominant tech companies tend to be headquartered in the US, and maybe they could work on something there. It's hard to staet a business in the EU, and studies have shown that dominant tech companies started as businesses ;p
 
Lakados said:
I am sure this has nothing to do at all with Nvidia's huge LLM update that caused all the competing language models to go from almost viable to not even in the same ballpark.
The French government put a fair amount of money into Minstral AI, and they are doing good work, but they went from being just a bit slower to something like 1/6'th the speed. SO...

Timing wise that is a bit weird.
Click to expand...
Oh, then it is not because of not having French language packs in their drivers ...
 
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