What simply occurred? Nvidia’s workplaces in France have been raided by the nation’s antitrust enforcers over suspicions of anticompetitive practices. Whereas the likes of Google and Apple have lengthy fought anticompetitive costs from regulators, this may be the primary time Group Inexperienced, which has seen its inventory skyrocket for the reason that AI growth started, has been accused of such issues.
The Wall Road Journal writes that the French competitors authority didn’t identify the situation that had been focused within the daybreak raid this week. Nonetheless, the company stated in a press launch that it was “an organization suspected of getting carried out anticompetitive practices within the graphics playing cards sector.” Individuals accustomed to the matter stated Nvidia was the topic of the raid.
The WSJ writes that these kind of raids happen very first thing within the morning and normally contain authorities seizing an organization’s premises and bodily and digital supplies, in addition to interviewing workers who arrive for work.
Few corporations have benefited from the surge in demand for generative AI as a lot as Nvidia. The corporate’s income for Q2 FY2024 got here in at a large $13.5 billion, marking a 101% improve in comparison with the identical interval one 12 months earlier. Most of that quantity ($10.32 billion) got here from its information center-class GPUs utilized in AI techniques – one other document and greater than double what the identical class earned within the earlier quarter.
Due to the excessive margins it makes on information middle playing cards – Nvidia generates as much as 1,000% revenue on each H100 GPU offered – the corporate made $6.1 billion in revenue throughout the quarter, up 843% YoY and greater than triple what it made throughout the earlier quarter. The outcomes imply Nvidia has now moved previous Qualcomm to turn into the world’s highest-earning fabless chip designer.
The French authority stated it carried out the raid following an investigation into the cloud-computing sector, which examined considerations that smaller corporations have been being unfairly pushed out by bigger corporations with entry to extra computing energy. The outcomes of that inquiry, printed in June, centered on the three “hyperscalers” dominating the trade: Amazon Internet Providers, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Nvidia isn’t talked about within the investigation.
The French company emphasizes that daybreak raids “don’t pre-suppose the existence of a breach of the regulation,” including that “solely a full investigation” might decide if any crimes have been dedicated.
