By Raffaele Huang and Liza Lin


SINGAPORE-Beijing opened an antitrust probe into U.S. chip juggernaut Nvidia, a week after the U.S. placed additional export controls on China's access to high-end semiconductors.

China's State Administration for Market Regulation said Monday that it was investigating Nvidia over suspicions that the company violated the terms of a conditional approval it received from Beijing in 2020 for its acquisition of an Israeli networking firm. The agency, which is the country's antimonopoly regulator, didn't provide details.

In March 2019, Nvidia completed what was then its biggest acquisition ever when it paid $7 billion to acquire Mellanox Technologies. China gave its conditional approval about a year later.

China's market regulator said in a statement in April 2020 that the deal was given the green light after Nvidia and Mellanox had agreed to provide an uninterrupted supply of graphics-processing units and networking equipment to the country. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip company also promised not to discriminate against customers in China, the regulator said.

A representative from Nvidia didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Beijing has responded rapidly to Washington's latest trade restrictions, which expanded export controls first imposed in 2022. The U.S. said it would block the sale to China of advanced memory chips used in artificial intelligence applications, and it put about 140 Chinese entities on a trade blacklist.

In response, China said Tuesday that it would tighten export controls on key raw materials used in the production of advanced processors and military equipment. Also, four major Chinese industry associations cautioned companies against buying American chips.

By taking aim at one of the most valuable U.S. companies, China is sending a message to American policymakers ahead of the second Trump administration that it is ready to respond to U.S. actions. Nvidia makes the bulk of the cutting-edge chips that power AI servers globally. It is restricted from selling its most advanced processors to China.

In recent years, China has used government investigations to express its displeasure over U.S. export limits. In May 2023, Beijing banned large Chinese companies from purchasing Micron's chips soon after putting the U.S. chip maker under a cybersecurity investigation. The move was seen as retaliation for an earlier round of American chip curbs.

In the past four quarters, Nvidia's China revenue reached $13.5 billion, accounting for 12% of the company's global revenue. That shrank from 20.8% a year earlier.


Write to Raffaele Huang at raffaele.huang@wsj.com and Liza Lin at liza.lin@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

12-09-24 0902ET