Nvidia has been served with subpoenas by the Justice Department as part of its ongoing investigation into potential antitrust violations by the Silicon Valley chipmaker that has dominated the artificial intelligence market.
The antitrust watchdog had previously delivered questionnaires, and has now sent legally binding requests to Nvidia, according to Bloomberg News.
The report added that other companies had also received subpoenas.
Nvidia declined to comment on the report, but said that it would provide any information that regulators require.
“We compete based on decades of investment and innovation, scrupulously adhering to all laws, making Nvidia openly available in every cloud and on-prem for every enterprise, and ensuring that customers can choose whatever solution is best for them,” a Nvidia spokesperson told Reuters.
Nvidia on Tuesday suffered a $279 billion loss off of its market capitalization after the company’s stock fell by nearly 10% as investors dampened their optimism about AI amid a global selloff on Tuesday.
Jensen Huang, the company CEO who has inculcated a workplace culture where employees stay in the office up to as much as seven days out of the week, shed $10 billion from his net worth, which was valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $94.9 billion as of the close of the stock market on Tuesday.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment late on Thursday.
Last month, The Information reported that Justice Department investigators were looking into complaints that Nvidia allegedly abused its market dominance in selling chips that power artificial intelligence technology.
Nvidia is alleged to have pressured cloud providers to buy multiple products while charging its customers more for networking gear if they bought AI chips from rivals including Advanced Micro Devices and Intel.
Nvidia controls around 80% of the AI chip market.
US lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have lobbied DOJ to probe Nvidia due to concerns it was violating antitrust law.
The world’s largest maker of chips used both for artificial intelligence and for computer graphics has seen demand for its chips jump following the release of the generative AI application ChatGPT, triggering regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic.
Earlier this summer, French authorities accused Nvidia of anticompetitive practices.
In 2022, Nvidia announced that it would abandon plans to acquire semiconductor giant ARM for $40 billion after the Federal Trade Commission sued to block it.
The FTC under its current chair, Lina Khan, has been particularly aggressive in cracking down on alleged antitrust violations by large technology firms — drawing the ire of Silicon Valley moguls and business leaders including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and IAC boss Barry Diller.
In July, Hoffman publicly urged the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, to dump Khan if she wins the 2024 presidential election in November.
Jonathan Kanter, the top DOJ official who heads its antitrust division, has also irked business leaders over his attempts to rein in corporate power with lawsuits against the likes of Google and Apple.
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