AI chipmaker Nvidia has increasingly found itself caught in a tug of war between Washington and Beijing. And on Monday, China gave a mighty pull—ruling that Nvidia had violated the country’s antitrust laws.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said, in a preliminary finding, that Nvidia had failed to fully comply with provisions it had imposed on the chipmaker in 2020 when the agency conditionally approved Nvidia’s acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli-U.S. networking equipment maker.
The move is largely seen as a way for Chinese officials to signal their displeasure with Washington’s restrictions on the export of cutting edge technology, including Nvidia’s top-of-the-line AI chips, to China. The regulator began its antitrust probe of Nvidia’s $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox in December, just days after the U.S. unveiled tougher export restrictions on high-bandwidth memory chips, which are important for AI applications, as well as chipmaking equipment.
The move is also being viewed by analysts as a way for Beijing to gain additional leverage in trade talks happening this week between U.S. and Chinese diplomats in Madrid. A tariff truce agreed between the two countries in May, and then extended in August, is now set to expire in November.
Over the weekend, Beijing also announced an anti-dumping investigation into a different kind of computer chip made by several U.S. companies, including Texas Instruments and Analog Devices—a decision that was also widely viewed as an attempt to gain leverage in the ongoing tariff negotiations.
