NVIDIA offices raided by competition authority of France
The surprise raid took place in the early hours of Wednesday as employees were coming into the office.
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What you need to know
NVIDIA’s local offices in France were hit by a dawn raid from the country’s competition authority early on Wednesday, September 27. French regulators initially refused to confirm the intended target of the raid, choosing instead to refer only to “anticompetitive practices in thegraphics cardssector.”
In a statement from the French Competition Authoritywebsite, the regulators acknowledged that the raid was done with the authorization of a judge, but that the raid did not pre-suppose that the unnamed company in question had breached the law.
TheWall Street JournalconfirmedNVIDIAas the target of the raid.
Such dawn raids do not pre-suppose the existence of a breach of the law which could be imputed to the company involved in the alleged practices, which only a full investigation into the merits of the case could establish, if appropriate.
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NVIDIA is one of the leading chip manufacturers in the world, and the company has benefited exponentially from increased interest inAI technologyandcloud computing. Valued at more than $1 trillion, NVIDIA holds 84% of GPU market share. The company reported an astounding $13.5 billion in revenue earlier this year.
The growing cloud and AI markets have garnered more interest from antitrust regulators as of late. The raid on NVIDIA’s offices were part of a more broad investigation into the two markets, as investigators look into whether the larger players in the tech sector were actively working together to garner an unfair advantage against potential new competitors.
This concern was echoed in the UK when theCompetition and Markets Authority there rejectedMicrosoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard King. The CMA argued that Microsoft, whosigned a 10-year deal with NVIDIAto add ABK’s catalog to itsGeForce Nowcloud streaming platform, was picking and choosing their future competition.
Microsoft, along with Google and Amazon, have been primary targets in the FCA’s investigation regarding market dominance and anticompetitive practices.
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