NVIDIA was raided by the French Competition Authority due to market monopoly involving large cloud companies

The Wall Street Journal has reported that NVIDIA faced a surprise inspection by the French Competition Authority, stemming from allegations of aiding major cloud companies in sidelining smaller cloud service providers from fair competition.

Earlier in June this year, the French Competition Authority had indicated that giants like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure were purportedly involved in practices detrimental to smaller cloud service entities, prompting an in-depth investigation.

In the midst of their inquiry, the French Competition Authority posited that fledgling cloud service providers, or those who have recently ventured into the market, find it increasingly challenging to rival large-scale cloud providers who have already established a significant market share. Especially within the current trajectory of artificial intelligence application services, smaller entities grapple to level the playing field against behemoths such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

The impetus behind the abrupt probe into NVIDIA is largely due to the prevalent reliance on graphics cards for AI computations among various cloud providers. NVIDIA has emerged as a pivotal graphics card supplier backing many AI application services, drawing the scrutinous gaze of the French Competition Authority.

NVIDIA has refrained from commenting on the matter.