American chip giant Nvidia is receiving close attention from regulatory agencies in multiple countries. According to media reports, Nvidia recently stated in a regulatory document that regulatory agencies in the European Union, China, and France have requested information about its graphics cards, and it is expected that there will be more requirements in the future.
At the end of last year, after the release of Generative Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT, the demand for chips in the market surged. According to market research firm Jibang Consulting, most of the over 1.2 million AI servers shipped this year are equipped with Nvidia GPU chips, accounting for 60% to 70% of the market share. At the end of May this year, Nvidia's market value exceeded trillions of dollars, becoming the world's first chip company with a market value exceeding trillions of dollars.
This current dominant advantage has aroused the interest of regulatory agencies around the world. Nvidia stated in regulatory documents, "For example, the French Competition Authority (FCA) has collected information from us about our business and competition in the graphics card and cloud service provider markets as part of ongoing investigations into competition in these markets."
In September this year, the FCA conducted a surprise inspection of a "graphics card industry" company, and local and American media identified the company as NVIDIA. The FCA released a report this year on competition in the cloud computing industry, studying the market dominance of cloud computing companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and whether their market dominance will affect competition. The report also points out that the development of large-scale language models, cloud games, and other industries may have an impact on the competitive operation of the industry. "The competition authorities must remain vigilant and ensure that existing participants do not hinder the development of small or new participants who utilize these technologies."
In September, some media quoted informed sources as saying that the European Union is investigating anti competitive behavior in the field of artificial intelligence chips led by Nvidia. Insiders say that the European Commission has been informally gathering opinions on potential abuse in the GPU industry to understand whether intervention is necessary in the future. However, in early October, an EU spokesperson responded that the European Commission had not conducted a formal investigation into artificial intelligence chips.
On November 21st local time, Nvidia released its financial report for the third quarter of the 2024 fiscal year as of October 29th, achieving revenue of $18.12 billion, a year-on-year increase of 206%, far exceeding market expectations of $16.2 billion; Net profit of 9.24 billion US dollars, higher than market expectations of 7.2 billion US dollars. The core business data center performed strongly, with a total revenue of $14.51 billion, a year-on-year increase of 279%, far exceeding market expectations of $12.87 billion.
The financial report shows that half of data center revenue comes from cloud computing infrastructure providers, and the other half comes from consumer internet organizations and large companies.