Nvidia’s France Offices Raided Over Anti-Competition Concerns: Report

The raid was part of what France’s competition authority reportedly says is a broader investigation into the cloud computing market over concerns that IT vendors can hurt smaller competitors by limiting access to computing power.

Nvidia’s offices in France were reportedly raided by the country’s competition authority this week over anti-competition concerns as part of a broader inquiry into the cloud computing market.

The Wall Street Journal identified Nvidia as the company subject to a Wednesday morning raid by France’s competition authority, which had only disclosed that its target was in the “graphics cards sector.”

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Nvidia declined to comment.

The publication noted that such raids typically result in the seizure of physical and digital materials as well as interviews with employees as part of an investigation.

The raid was part of what the French authority said is a broader investigation into the cloud computing market over concerns that IT vendors can hurt smaller competitors by limiting access to computing power.

Nvidia’s data center GPUs have faced extraordinary demand over the last several months from cloud services providers, among other companies, because of their ability to quickly process a variety of demanding and complex AI workloads, including the popular ChatGPT chatbot.

The chip designer said in August that its second-quarter revenue doubled to $13.5 billion from the same period last year, mainly due to strong demand driven by generative AI development.

The high demand for Nvidia’s most powerful GPUs, the A100 and H100, have resulted in significant shortages of the processors. These shortages have prompted some vendors, like Lenovo, to encourage partners and customers to consider alternatives if they don’t have super-demanding applications.