Chinese Authorities Launch Antitrust Investigation Against NVIDIA
NVIDIA faces scrutiny from Chinese regulators over potential antitrust violations related to its acquisition of Mellanox Technologies.
NVIDIA, a leading graphics chip manufacturer and a key player in the AI industry, is currently under investigation by Chinese regulators for potential antitrust violations, as reported by The New York Times. The focus of the investigation is the acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, a computer networking company that NVIDIA purchased in 2020. According to Bloomberg, as part of the acquisition conditions, Chinese regulators mandated that NVIDIA must ‘provide information about new Mellanox products to competitors within 90 days of making them available to NVIDIA.’ The State Administration for Market Regulation in China has initiated this investigation, believing that these terms have been violated.
This is not the first time NVIDIA has faced antitrust investigations; the US Department of Justice reportedly launched its own investigation into NVIDIA in September 2024. However, the current investigation takes on a different dimension in the context of the ongoing trade war between the US and China. On December 1, the US Department of Commerce announced export restrictions and sanctions on 140 Chinese companies involved in chipmaking tools, as well as on ‘China-bound shipments of high bandwidth memory chips,’ as reported by Reuters. The aim was to limit China’s capability to develop advanced AI by restricting access to the chips necessary for training and running AI models. This move was met with a response from China, which banned all shipments of gallium, germanium, and antimony to the US.
NVIDIA’s H100 GPUs have been instrumental in training the majority of generative AI models currently in use, a position that is unlikely to change with the introduction of Blackwell chips earlier this year. This has made NVIDIA one of the most valuable companies globally, attracting significant governmental oversight. Additionally, Bloomberg reports that NVIDIA derives approximately 15% of its revenue from China. Regardless of the outcome, this investigation represents a logical next step in escalating the conflict between the US and China.