Nvidia's $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI Raises Big Antitrust Concerns

upstart writes:

Invest in a major customer, then get money from a major customer?

Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, marking an unprecedented financial and strategic alignment between the leading AI hardware provider and one of the best-known developers of artificial intelligence models. However, the deal raises major antitrust concerns among legal experts and policymakers over potential market imbalance, as in both cases the investment can impact competitors of both companies, reports Reuters.

The planned investment raises questions about how the cash infusion could affect Nvidia's other customers and the overall AI hardware market. Nvidia already commands the lion's share of the market for hardware used for AI training and inference, as virtually all AI companies use its Hopper and Blackwell GPUs, so they rely on access to Nvidia's GPUs to scale their own models. Legal experts note that Nvidia's investment may create incentives to prioritize OpenAI over others, potentially offering better terms or faster access to a limited supply of leading-edge GPUs, such as Rubin.

In response, a representative for Nvidia stated that the company's commitment to all of its clients remains unchanged. The spokesperson emphasized that having a financial interest in any one partner would not affect how the company serves others, assuring that every customer will continue to receive the same level of attention and service.

Additionally, if OpenAI prefers hardware from Nvidia over hardware from its rivals, such as AMD, or even its own processor developed in collaboration with Broadcom, then Nvidia will get an unfair advantage. Keeping in mind that OpenAI is believed to have acquired $10 billion worth of custom-built AI processors from Broadcom, it is unlikely that it won't deploy them, but now that Nvidia will provide OpenAI hardware worth tens of billions of dollars, the AI company will continue to do more work on Nvidia's hardware rather than on competing processors.

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