Enlarge / Nvidia logo at Impact 2024 event in Poznan, Poland on May 16, 2024. Getty Images | NurPhoto reader comments 8 The US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission reportedly plan investigations into whether Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI are snuffing out competition in artificial intelligence technology. The agencies struck a deal on how to divide up the investigations, The New York Times reported yesterday.
Under this deal, the Justice Department will take the lead role in investigating Nvidia's behavior while the FTC will take the lead in investigating Microsoft and OpenAI. The agencies' agreement "allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated," the NYT wrote. One potential area of investigation is Nvidia's chip dominance, "including how the company's software locks customers into using its chips, as well as how Nvidia distributes those chips to customers," the report said.
An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Ars today. High-end GPUs are “scarce,” antitrust chief says Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general in charge of the DOJ's antitrust division, discussed the agency's plans in an interview with the Financial Times this week. Kanter said the DOJ is examining "monopoly choke points and the competitive landscape" in AI.
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