Nvidia offices raided by French competition authority

Nvidia’s France offices were raided by the country’s competition authority this week, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. While the French agency doesn’t mention Nvidia by name, it confirms it carried out a raid over concerns about anti-competitive practices in the graphics cards industry.

Sources tell the WSJ that French authorities specifically targeted Nvidia, which has seen demand for its chips skyrocket in recent months. Several companies, including Microsoft and OpenAI, have purchased thousands of the company’s high-end AI chips to power large language models.

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 says it conducted the raid as part of its increased scrutiny on cloud technology, a topic the agency published a market study on in June.

A machine-translated version of the French agency’s press release says that dawn raids “do not pre-suppose the existence of a breach of the law,” which is something “only a full investigation” can establish. Nvidia declined to comment on the story. However, a raid could suggest that Nvidia’s reign in the chipmaking market isn’t going unnoticed by global governments.