Nvidia office reportedly raided in France due to “anticompetitive practices”

Nvidia’s offices in France have reportedly been raided by the French competition authority due to “anticompetitive practices.”

Over the last decade, Nvidia has skyrocketed in popularity with their high-end graphics cards and various investments in AI hardware.

They also have GeForce Now, a cloud gaming service that recently partnered with Xbox to bring Game Pass titles to the service.

On September 27, 2023, the France competition authority raided Nvidia’s offices, reportedly due to an investigation into “anticompetitive practices.”

Nvidia France offices raided according to reports

As reported by Reuters, Nvidia’s local offices in France were raided by authorities. While they didn’t go into full detail about the raid, they did give a few hints at what they’re investigating.

The French competition authority has revealed that their raid followed a broader inquiry into the cloud-computing sector of the industry. According to authorities, the inquiry revolves around concerns that cloud-computing companies could use their access to computing power to exclude smaller competitors.

Nvidia declined a comment to Reuters regarding the “anticompetitive practices.”

The French competition authority issued a statement about the raid on their website. It’s in French, so here is a translation.

“Following authorization from a judge of liberty and detention, the investigation services of the French Competition Authority conducted a dawn raid at the premises of a company suspected of having implemented anticompetitive practices in the graphics cards sector,” they said.

“This is part of the focus put on the cloud by the French Competition Authority, which was the subject of an opinion on competition in its sector published on June 29, 2023. Such dawn raids do not presuppose the existence of a violation of the law that could be attributed to the company involved in the alleged practices, which only a full investigation into the merits of the case could establish, if appropriate.”

So, it’s clear that Nvidia might not have broken any anticompetitive laws according to the authorities.

We’ll update this article as more news becomes available. In the meantime, head over to our Tech section for more stories.