EU and U.S. Antitrust Scrutiny Looms Over NVIDIA's $700M Run:ai Acquisition

The European Union has initiated a review of NVIDIA's acquisition of Israeli AI startup Run:ai, citing potential competition concerns. Despite this transaction not meeting the notification thresholds outlined by the EU Merger Regulation, issues have been raised by Italian authorities under their national competition law.

The European Commission has stated that Italian competition authorities are empowered to scrutinize acquisitions posing a competitive threat, even if they do not meet national turnover thresholds. This has prompted the EU to evaluate the transaction, aiming to determine whether it could significantly affect market competition where both NVIDIA and Run:ai operate.

A spokesperson for NVIDIA expressed the company's willingness to collaborate with regulators, addressing any concerns they might have regarding Run:ai. The acquisition, initially announced in April, is expected to bolster NVIDIA's AI offerings by enhancing the efficiency of their chips. Run:ai's technology allows multiple workloads to run parallelly, thus optimizing GPU usage and reducing the number of GPUs required for processing tasks.

Alongside the EU's scrutiny, reports from August indicated that the U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating the transaction on antitrust grounds. While the exact financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed, NVIDIA is reported to have offered approximately $700 million for Run:ai. The acquisition forms part of NVIDIA's strategy to extend AI capabilities across various cloud and enterprise systems, with a focus on providing clients with optimized system and software solutions.