Recently, it has been reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating NVIDIA's acquisition of Israeli AI startup Run:ai, suspecting potential antitrust violations. This news has garnered widespread attention.
In April this year, NVIDIA announced the acquisition deal but did not disclose the price. According to estimates from TechCrunch, the acquisition price is approximately $700 million. The U.S. Department of Justice has asked market participants about the competitive impact of this transaction.
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Currently, the scope of the investigation is unclear. However, the Department of Justice has asked some questions, such as whether this deal would suppress emerging competition and consolidate NVIDIA's dominant market position in the field.
On Thursday, NVIDIA stated that the company "wins on merit" and "strictly adheres to all laws," also mentioning that it will continue to support aspiring innovators in various industries and markets, and is willing to provide any necessary information to regulatory authorities. Run:ai did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and the Department of Justice also declined to comment.
Currently, U.S. regulatory agencies and law enforcement departments are strengthening their scrutiny of anti-competitive behavior in the AI field, especially concerning large tech giants like NVIDIA. In June, Jonathan Kanter, head of the Department of Justice's antitrust division, told the Financial Times that he was reviewing issues including "monopoly bottlenecks" in data used for training large language models and access to key hardware such as graphics processing unit chips, noting that GPUs used for training large language models have become "scarce resources."
NVIDIA dominates the sales of the most advanced GPUs. Run:ai previously collaborated with the tech giant and developed a platform to optimize GPU usage.
According to Politico, as part of the investigation, the Department of Justice is seeking information on how NVIDIA decides its chip allocation. Government lawyers are also inquiring about NVIDIA's software platform Cuda, which enables chips originally designed for graphics processing to accelerate AI applications and is considered one of NVIDIA's most critical tools by industry insiders.
In June, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (competition regulator) reached an agreement to divide the antitrust oversight of key AI participants. The Department of Justice will lead the investigation into NVIDIA, while the Federal Trade Commission will be responsible for overseeing the assessment of Microsoft and OpenAI (the startup behind ChatGPT).
Key Points:
🧐 U.S. Department of Justice investigates potential antitrust violations in NVIDIA's acquisition of Run:ai.
😕 Details of the transaction and the scope of the investigation are unclear; NVIDIA claims to comply with the law.
👀 U.S. regulatory agencies strengthen anti-competitive scrutiny in the AI field, with two departments分工监督.