Nvidia lands in hot water as new lawsuit claims it stole trade secrets

A lawsuit brought by automotive tech company Valeo has accused Nvidia of stealing trade secrets.

Nvidia has been in tech news a great deal this month as rumors and leaks swirl about its upcoming GPUs. But, this time Nvidia is hitting the headlines for a very different reason. Automotive tech company Valeo Schalter und Sensoren is suing the trillion-dollar Nvidia, alleging that trade secrets were stolen.

According to a report by SiliconValley.com, the lawsuit concerns the hiring of former Valeo employee Mohammad Moniruzzaman, who is alleged to have copied a large number of files before he left Valeo to join Nvidia. Among the stolen files is said to be the source code of an AI-assisted parking application, and various other confidential documents.

The theft was discovered when Moniruzzaman was in a conference call with Nvidia and Valeo employees regarding a joint project, and accidentally left his screen sharing the source code, which Valeo employees recognized.

Valeo says Nvidia is a newcomer to automotive tech

Though Moniruzzaman was convicted in 2022, Valeo is going further by launching a lawsuit against Nvidia. Though Nvidia is the more recognizable name to most, Valeo has actually been around for over 100 years. In the lawsuit, Valeo describes itself as an established name in automotive technology and goes on to categorize Nvidia as a recent entrant into the sphere.

Because of this, Valeo argues that Nvidia does not have the experience needed to create the cutting-edge tech they claim to have created and that Valeo’s company secrets were used in the process.

Nvidia has yet to comment on the lawsuit, but a previous letter from Nvidia’s lawyers to Valeo written in 2022 stated that Nvidia had no knowledge of the stolen confidential material and that Nvidia had ‘no interest’ in Valeo’s code.

Further developments on this case will reported as news comes in.