French watchdog raids Nvidia offices over anti-competition concerns

San Francisco, Sep 29 (IANS) Graphics chip giant Nvidia’s offices in France were raided by the country’s competition authority over concerns about anti-market practices, the media reported.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, citing sources, France's competition authority specifically targeted Nvidia as its chip business grew manifold.

While the French agency did not mention Nvidia by name, it confirmed it carried out a raid over concerns about anti-competitive practices in the graphics cards industry.

“Following authorisation from a liberty and custody judge, the investigation services of the Autorite de la concurrence carried out a dawn raid at the premises of a company suspected of having implemented anticompetitive practices in the graphics cards sector,” the French regulator said in a statement.

“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,” it added.

Nvidia was yet to comment on the WSJ report. France’s competition authority has expressed concerns that established companies in the sector could harm smaller firms in the sector.

“Several companies, including Microsoft and OpenAI, have purchased thousands of the company’s high-end AI chips to power large language models,” the report mentioned.

Nvidia reported a record quarterly revenue of $13.51 billion in its latest report, a 101 per cent increase from the year-ago period.

Nvidia’s valuation also briefly crossed the trillion-dollar mark in May as a result of the AI boom.

According to the WSJ, these types of raids occur early in the morning and have authorities “search a company’s premises, seize physical and digital materials and interview employees who arrive for work”.

The French authority said it conducted the raid as part of its increased scrutiny on cloud technology.