By Chavi Mehta
(Reuters) – The European Union (EU) is examining alleged anticompetitive practices in chips used for artificial intelligence, a market that Nvidia dominates, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The European Commission has been informally collecting views on potentially abusive practices in the sector for graphics processing units (GPU), used for AI work as well for gaming, to understand if there’s need for future intervention, the report said.
The early-stage investigation may never result in a formal probe or penalties, the report added.
Nvidia, which has a near-monopoly on the GPU market with its 80% market share, declined to comment, while the European Commission did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.
French authorities have also been interviewing market players on Nvidia’s key role in AI chips, its price policy, the shortage of chips and its impact on prices, the report added.
France’s competition authority on Tuesday conducted a raid on a company in the “graphics cards sector”, which a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters was Nvidia.
Nvidia’s stock and demand for its chips shot up after generative AI chatbot ChatGPT’s stellar rise last year.
The company’s chips are found in almost all systems globally that power applications like ChatGPT, the reason Nvidia is the only trillion-dollar semiconductor firm in the world.
