NVIDIA

The Department of Justice began questioning Nvidia and market participants about the competitive effects of Nvidia's proposed $12.9 billion acquisition of AI platform Hugging Face, examining whether Nvidia could use the acquisition to disadvantage rivals, gain anticompetitive leverage, or harm Hugging Face's competitors. The inquiry is part of a broader, years-long DOJ scrutiny of Nvidia's dealmaking that also covers its Groq, SchedMD, and Run:ai transactions. A DOJ spokesperson characterized the outreach as routine merger review; no formal charges or blocking action have been announced.

Nvidia and AMD lobbied the White House and senior Commerce Department officials in September 2026 to stop lawmakers from enacting stricter China chip export controls in the annual must-pass defense policy bill, despite the proposed limits having bipartisan Congressional support. CEO Jensen Huang leveraged his close relationship with the Trump administration, including a planned AI meeting with the president and House Speaker Mike Johnson, to press the case against the restrictions.

The US Department of Justice opened an antitrust investigation into Nvidia's licensing agreement with AI inference chip startup Groq, examining whether the deal was structured to neutralize a potential competitor in the AI chip market. The investigation is ongoing with no conclusions reached as of October 2026.

On August 24, 2026, Taiwan prosecutors indicted 9 people, including two Nvidia Taiwan employees, over an alleged scheme to illegally export 130 AI servers equipped with export-controlled Nvidia B300 GPUs to China in violation of US export controls. A Nvidia distribution manager surnamed Chang was named the 'key figure' who authorized release of the B300 GPUs; a second Nvidia employee was charged with breach of trust. Prosecutors say defendants used fake websites, falsified end-user certifications, and forged business records to route 74 servers to China (50 via Indonesia, 16 directly, 8 via Japan/Hong Kong); 56 servers were intercepted by Taiwan customs. Nvidia said it would work with Taiwanese authorities to resolve the allegations. US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks cited the case in a letter arguing Nvidia's inability to detect this Southeast Asia diversion scheme undermines its claims that it can police direct China shipments.

A stockholder derivative lawsuit filed July 31, 2026 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Berliner v. Huang et al.) accused Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang, CFO Colette Kress, and the board of breaching fiduciary duty by knowingly training NeMo Megatron and other language models on pirated 'shadow library' datasets (Anna's Archive, LibGen, Sci-Hub, Z-Library, Books3/SlimPajama), including material Nvidia allegedly sourced directly from Anna's Archive in 2023 despite an internal warning about copyright issues. The complaint also alleges Nvidia's Magpie TTS, FUGATTO, PersonaPlex and other voice-synthesis models extracted biometric voiceprints from hundreds of thousands of hours of speech recordings without notice or consent, in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, and that proxy filings misrepresented data-sourcing compliance.

Senator Elizabeth Warren sent Nvidia a formal letter demanding it detail compliance measures after multiple DOJ enforcement actions alleged unlawful diversion of Nvidia H100/H200 chips (roughly $160M) and servers (roughly $510M) to China via transshipment through Malaysia and Thailand, and questioned CEO Jensen Huang's public statements that there was 'no evidence of any AI chip diversion' and that Nvidia's China market share had 'dropped to zero.' Warren later invoked statutory authority under the Export Control Reform Act to compel the Commerce Department to turn over related enforcement records, and jointly with Sen. Banks urged Commerce to suspend or reconsider Nvidia's export licenses following a related Supermicro diversion indictment.

On March 12, 2026, EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera announced investigation into Nvidia for potential bundling practices that force buyers to purchase networking equipment to access AI chips. This is part of broader EU scrutiny of Big Tech's AI operations for competition distortions, separate from the ongoing US DOJ investigation.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with President Trump and Republican senators in December 2025 to lobby for allowing exports of advanced H200 AI chips to China. The Trump administration subsequently approved conditional exports. Senator Elizabeth Warren criticized Huang for 'spending the past year lobbying the President to greenlight the sale of advanced AI chips to China.' Huang had previously called US export controls a 'failure' and faced backlash from Trump allies, with Steve Bannon labeling him a 'CCP supporter.'

Nvidia's FY2025 sustainability report revealed total carbon emissions of approximately 7.15 million tonnes CO2e, an 87% increase from the prior year's 3.8 million tonnes. Nearly all emissions (97%+) came from Scope 3 (supply chain and product use), with 'Purchased Goods and Services' accounting for 87% of Scope 3 emissions. A Greenpeace report gave Nvidia the lowest ranking (F) for supply chain transparency and noted Nvidia has not set any renewable energy targets for its supply chain. The company has no formal net-zero commitment across all scopes, though it achieved 100% renewable electricity for its own operations in FY2025.

In May 2025, Nvidia agreed to supply at least 18,000 GB300 Grace Blackwell processors to HUMAIN, a company created by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to make Saudi Arabia a global AI leader. Over five years, the number could reach several hundred thousand chips, with data centers of up to 500 megawatts capacity. An additional deal with Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) will deploy up to 5,000 Blackwell GPUs. In November 2025, the US Commerce Department approved transfer of 35,000 additional Nvidia chips to HUMAIN. The deal was facilitated by the Trump administration easing Biden-era export controls.

Nvidia's fiscal 2024 and 2025 due diligence processes revealed multiple supplier non-compliance issues including hiring fees charged to workers, document and passport retention, excessive working hours, and penalties for leaving employers before specified time periods. An independent human rights assessment commissioned by Nvidia found forced labor and child labor to be salient risks in the supply chain.

NVIDIA's due diligence in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 revealed supplier non-compliance including hiring fees charged to workers, document and passport retention, excessive working hours, and penalties for leaving employers early. An independent human rights assessment found forced labor and child labor to be salient risks in NVIDIA's supply chain, though not in direct operations.

NVIDIA donated $1 million to Trump's 2025 inauguration fund, contributing to the record $239 million raised. This came despite the company's stated policy of not making political contributions.

NVIDIA Corporation made a seven-figure donation to President Donald Trump's $239 million inauguration. CEO Jensen Huang met with Trump at the White House, attended a $1 million per plate Mar-a-Lago dinner, and stated 'I'd be delighted to go see him and congratulate him.' After the Mar-a-Lago visit, plans for export controls on NVIDIA's H20 chip were paused, raising ethics concerns about quid-pro-quo arrangements.

Nvidia processors have been integrated into Israeli military systems, including the Elbit Systems Lanius drone which uses the NVIDIA Jetson TX2 AI processor. Nvidia has its second-largest R&D center in Israel with 13% of its global workforce based there, and collaborates with over 800 Israeli startups, some contributing to military technology. In January 2025, Nvidia announced a $500 million investment in a new AI research center near Haifa. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has flagged the dual-use potential of Nvidia technologies for surveillance and military applications in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Unlike many tech companies rolling back DEI initiatives in 2024-2025, Nvidia maintained its 'Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging' programs and released its 2024 Sustainability Report with a dedicated section on diversity. However, the company has faced internal criticism, with a former employee noting that Black employees represented only 0.08% of the workforce (about 90 out of 11,000+ employees) and that three Black employee resource group presidents left within six months after being 'passed up for promotion.'

NVIDIA faces simultaneous antitrust investigations in three major markets. The US DOJ issued a subpoena in September 2024 investigating whether NVIDIA makes it harder to switch suppliers and penalizes buyers not exclusively using its chips. France raided NVIDIA offices in September 2023, with June 2024 findings of likely abuse through price fixing, production restrictions, and discriminatory behavior. China's SAMR launched an investigation in December 2024 for suspected AML violations related to a 2020 transaction.

The U.S. Department of Justice escalated its antitrust investigation of Nvidia by issuing legally binding subpoenas in September 2024. The DOJ investigated concerns that Nvidia made it harder to switch to other AI chip suppliers, penalized buyers not exclusively using its chips, and that its $700 million acquisition of RunAI could foreclose competition. Separately, China's SAMR found in September 2025 that Nvidia violated anti-monopoly law related to its 2020 Mellanox acquisition by allegedly tying GPU purchases to networking equipment. France also opened an investigation in 2024.

In August 2024, Bloomberg reported that 10 current and former Nvidia employees described an intense work culture where workers regularly worked seven days a week with shifts ending at 1-2 AM. Former employees described contentious meetings with shouting as common. CEO Jensen Huang publicly praised pushing employees to the brink, saying 'I'd rather torture you into greatness because I believe in you.' Despite these conditions, Nvidia's turnover rate was only 2.7% (vs 17.7% industry average) due to exceptional stock compensation that functions as 'golden handcuffs.' The company maintained high Glassdoor ratings (4.6/5) with 93% of employees recommending the company.

Nvidia joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology's U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC), working to advance trustworthy AI standards. The company was among 20 organizations (alongside Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI) to sign the Frontier AI Safety Commitments at the 2024 Seoul AI Summit. Nvidia also developed NeMo Guardrails, open-source software for ensuring LLM responses are accurate and appropriate, and launched the NVIDIA Halos safety stack for physical AI systems like autonomous vehicles and robotics. Additionally, Nvidia partnered with NSF contributing $77 million for the Open Multimodal AI Infrastructure project led by Allen Institute for AI.