By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Regulators in the European Union, China and France have asked for information on Nvidia’s graphic cards, with more requests expected in the future, the U.S. chip giant said in a regulatory filing.
Nvidia is the world’s largest maker of chips used both for artificial intelligence and for computer graphics. Demand for its chips jumped following the release of the generative AI application ChatGPT late last year.
The California-based company has a market share of around 80% via its chips and other hardware and its powerful software that runs them.
Its graphics cards (GPUs) are high-performance devices that enable powerful graphics rendering and processing for use in video editing, video gaming and other complex computing operations.
The company said this has attracted regulatory interest around the world.
“For example, the French Competition Authority collected information from us regarding our business and competition in the graphics card and cloud service provider market as part of an ongoing inquiry into competition in those markets,” Nvidia said in a regulatory filing dated Nov. 21.
The French watchdog raided Nvidia’s local office in September, a person familiar with the matter had told Reuters.
“We have also received requests for information from regulators in the European Union and China regarding our sales of GPUs and our efforts to allocate supply, and we expect to receive additional requests for information in the future,” Nvidia said in the filing.
Separately, Nvidia has delayed the launch of a new China-focused AI chip, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Susan Fenton)
