NVIDIA, graphics chip maker and recent backbone of the AI industry, is under investigation by Chinese regulators over potential antitrust violations, The New York Times reports. The concerns center on the acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, a computer networking company NVIDIA bought in 2020.
As part of the conditions of that acquisition, Chinese regulators required NVIDIA to “provide information about new [Mellanox] products to rivals within 90 days of making them available to NVIDIA,” Bloomberg writes. China’s State Administration for Market Regulation is kicking off its investigation because it believes that those terms were violated. This wouldn’t be the first time NVIDIA has been investigated for monopolistic behavior – The US Department of Justice reportedly launched its own antitrust investigation into NVIDIA in September 2024 – but it has a different flavor in the context of the escalating trade war between the US and China.
On December 1, the US Department of Com
