NVIDIA—DOJ issued antitrust subpoenas to Nvidia investigating AI chip market dominance and anticompetitive practices
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.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antitrust & Competition | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.858 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.57)
Evidence (1 signal)
DOJ subpoenaed Nvidia in escalating antitrust investigation of AI chip market dominance
The U.S. Department of Justice issued legally binding subpoenas to Nvidia investigating concerns the company made it harder to switch AI chip suppliers, penalized non-exclusive buyers, and that its $700M RunAI acquisition could foreclose competition. Separately, China's SAMR found in September 2025 that Nvidia violated anti-monopoly law related to its 2020 Mellanox acquisition. France also opened an investigation.