France nears end of Nvidia antitrust investigation

France’s competition authority said its probe into Nvidia Corp was nearing its end, pushing one of Europe’s most closely watched AI antitrust cases toward a decision point. Umberto Berkani, the authority’s general rapporteur, told reporters, “We are nearing the end of the investigation.”

The case began to take shape with an unannounced inspection in the graphics cards sector on September 26, 2023, an action the authority said did not prejudge any wrongdoing. It has since become part of a broader examination of how control over chips, software and cloud infrastructure shapes competition in the AI economy, where Nvidia’s hardware sits at the center of data centers, startups and large cloud providers.

That wider concern was laid out in the Autorité de la concurrence’s June 28, 2024 opinion on the competitive functioning of generative AI. The authority said it had opened ex officio inquiries on February 8, 2024 and collected views from around 40 parties and 10 stakeholder associations. Its review focused on cloud infrastructure, computing power, data, skilled workers and the investments and partnerships being built by major digital companies.

Berkani’s role gives the investigation added weight. He was appointed general rapporteur on April 3, 2025 for a four-year term renewable once, succeeding Stanislas Martin and taking formal oversight of the authority’s antitrust investigation services. The authority has also shown it is willing to use its powers: in 2024 it issued 11 antitrust decisions and imposed more than €1.4 billion in fines.

The Nvidia probe has drawn interest because it reaches beyond one product line and into the infrastructure layer beneath the AI boom. Earlier concerns centered on Nvidia’s CUDA software ecosystem and on investments in AI-focused cloud providers such as CoreWeave. The broader pressure is international as well: the US Department of Justice launched an investigation into Nvidia alongside Microsoft and OpenAI in June 2024.

For Europe’s regulators, the question now is whether antitrust law can still move early enough to check concentrated power in the AI supply chain before chip access, software ecosystems and cloud ties harden into durable dominance. Any French decision would land in a market where Nvidia’s tools help determine who can train models, rent capacity and compete on equal terms.