SHARES of Nvidia fell Monday after China’s market regulator said it is investigating the high-flying U.S. microchip company over suspected violations of anti-monopoly laws.

Nvidia said it’s willing to answer any questions regulators may have about its business, Yicai reported yesterday.

The Chinese authorities are investigating Nvidia for the US$6.9 billion acquisition of Israeli tech firm Mellanox Technologies in 2019.

Nvidia shares fell 2.55% to close at US$138.81 Monday. They are still up 179% so far this year.

Considered a bellwether for artificial intelligence (AI) demand, Nvidia has led the AI sector to become one of the stock market’s biggest companies, as tech giants spend heavily on the company’s chips and data centers needed to train and operate their AI systems.

Nvidia’s shares have surged this year along with the California company’s revenue and profit due to AI demand. According to data firm FactSet, about 16% of Nvidia’s revenue comes from China, second only to its U.S.-generated revenue.

China’s antitrust investigation follows a report this summer by technology news site The Information that the U.S. Justice Department was investigating complaints from rivals that Nvidia was abusing its market dominance in the chip sector. The allegations reported include Nvidia threatening to punish those who buy products from both itself and its competitors at the same time.

Nvidia’s invention of graphics processor chips, or GPUs, in 1999 helped spark the growth of the PC gaming market and redefined computer graphics.

(SD-Agencies)