Just experienced a sharp decline, $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ and now facing the danger of increased antitrust investigation by the U.S. government.

After the U.S. stock market closed on September 3rd, Tuesday, Bloomberg reported, citing sources, that the U.S. Department of Justice has issued subpoenas to Nvidia and some third-party companies, seeking evidence of Nvidia's violation of antitrust laws. Antitrust officials are concerned that Nvidia will make it harder for customers to switch to other artificial intelligence (AI) computing providers, and buyers who do not exclusively use its AI chips will be penalized. This news indicates that U.S. regulators have escalated their investigation into Nvidia's alleged monopoly in the computing services market.

According to the above-mentioned sources, the U.S. Department of Justice had previously issued questionnaires to some companies, and now it has issued legally binding requests for information to the companies that received subpoenas. This brings the U.S. government one step closer to formally filing a complaint against Nvidia.

After the above-mentioned news was released, Nvidia fell further in after-market trading, with a drop of more than 2% at one point. On Tuesday, Nvidia closed down 9.5%, reaching a new low since August 9th. Due to the sharp decline in stock price, Nvidia's market cap shrunk by approximately $278.9 billion in a single day, setting a new record for the largest single-day market cap evaporated in the U.S. stock market, surpassing the previous record set by Meta on February 3, 2022, when $232 billion in market cap evaporated.

Representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice and Nvidia have both declined to comment on the news from this Tuesday. However, news that has been circulating for more than a year indicates that the U.S. government is intensifying its regulation of the AI field.

In July of last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began investigating whether OpenAI's data collection practices could potentially harm consumers.

In January this year, the FTC's regulatory vision further expanded, and it began to fully examine the strategic cooperation between technology giants and AI startups. This includes Microsoft's huge investment in OpenAI, as well as Google, Amazon's collaboration with Anthropic.

Nearly three months ago, the media reported that the US government had launched an investigation into industry giants in the AI sector such as Nvidia.

An article from Wall Street News in early June mentioned that the media reported an agreement between the US Department of Justice and the FTC to continue the antitrust investigation into the dominant position of Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia in the AI industry. According to the agreement, the Department of Justice will lead the investigation into whether Nvidia, as a chip manufacturing giant, has violated antitrust laws, while the FTC will lead the antitrust investigation into OpenAI and Microsoft.

The article mentioned that some analysts believe this is the most powerful signal of the US regulatory authorities' escalation of antitrust investigations in the AI sector.

Reports in June pointed out that at the end of May, the US Department of Justice held a public seminar on competition in the AI field at Stanford University, with dozens of industry companies participating. Although Nvidia's name was rarely mentioned at the seminar, companies in attendance expressed that the shortage of high-performance chips required for training AI base models has had a significant impact on the industry.

According to the news in June, investigators have been in touch with other technology companies to collect information. This Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the Department of Justice's San Francisco office is leading the investigation.

Editor/Somer