According to the New York Times report, Nvidia, as a manufacturer of graphics chips and the main supporter of the artificial intelligence industry, has been investigated by Chinese regulatory agencies for possible violations of antitrust laws. China’s concerns stem from Mellanox Technologies, which the Green Team acquired in 2020. The mentioned company operates in the field of computer networks.
According to Bloomberg, Chinese institutions had set several conditions for the purchase of Mellanox Technologies. One of the conditions was that after Mellanox’s new products were made available to Nvidia, they had to be made available to other companies 90 days later. China’s State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) believes Nvidia violated the said agreement.
Nvidia has also faced other regulatory investigations in recent months. The US Department of Justice started its antitrust investigation against the Green Team in September 2024. Now, due to the intensification of the trade war between America and China, this matter takes on a new color.
On December 1, the US Department of Commerce imposed export restrictions and sanctions against 140 Chinese companies that manufacture chip-making tools and also send high-end memory chips to China. America’s goal is to limit China’s ability to develop advanced technology by preventing it from producing the chips needed to train and run artificial intelligence.
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Nvidia’s threat seems logical in several ways. The company’s H100 GPUs are used to train most AI models, and we expect that to change with the Blackwell chips that Nvidia introduced earlier this year. That made Nvidia one of the most valuable companies in the world, and now a big target for government oversight. According to a Bloomberg report, about 15% of Nvidia’s revenue comes from China.
