The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) is investigating Nvidia's acquisition of Israeli artificial intelligence company Run for possible antitrust violations, a source familiar with the DoJ's discussions with third parties said. The transaction, announced in April, has generated inquiries about its competitive impact.
The acquisition price has yet to be officially disclosed, but TechCrunch estimated the value to be around $700 million. The DoJ's investigation includes questions about whether the deal could stifle emerging competition in the sector and consolidate Nvidia's dominant position in the market. Nvidia, a leader in sales of the most advanced graphics processing units (GPUs), said Thursday that it "wins on merit" and that it complies "scrupulously with all laws". The company expressed its willingness to provide any information regulators need.
Run, which had already collaborated with Nvidia before the acquisition, has developed a platform that optimizes GPU utilization. The DoJ investigation also examines how Nvidia decides the allocation of its chips and the influence of its Cuda software platform, crucial for accelerating AI applications. The DoJ and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) agreed in June to split antitrust oversight of key players in AI, with the DoJ leading the investigations into Nvidia. In June, Jonathan Kanter, head of the DoJ's antitrust division, told the Financial Times that it was examining "monopolistic choke points" in areas including data used to train language models and access to essential hardware such as GPU chips. Kanter noted that the GPUs needed to train language models have become a "scarce resource".
The scope of the DoJ investigation remains uncertain, but government lawyers are seeking to better understand the acquisition's competitive impact. The increasing attention of U.S. regulators on anti-competitive behavior in AI, especially in the context of tech giants like Nvidia, underscores the importance of maintaining fair and open markets.
