Nvidia Faces Antitrust Scrutiny Over Groq Deal as Chipmaker Chases Doubling of Sales

DOJ reviews whether Nvidia's Groq licensing deal dodged competition scrutiny, as CEO Jensen Huang pledges to double chip sales next year.

Nvidia's legal team has a new item on its agenda. According to media reports, the US Department of Justice is examining whether the company's licensing arrangement with AI chip startup Groq was deliberately structured to sidestep a competition review. The probe casts a fresh light on the regulatory attention that has followed the chipmaker as it steadily widens its grip on the artificial intelligence industry.

Investors, for now, appear unbothered. The stock trades at EUR 191.00, roughly flat versus the prior session, and has added 1.5% over the past week. Year to date the shares are up 19%, leaving them 5.7% below the 52-week high of EUR 202.50 reached on May 14.

A Sales Target Backed by Silicon

While antitrust lawyers dig into the Groq paperwork, the operational side of the story has its own momentum. At a summit in Scotland, CEO Jensen Huang said the company would sell twice as many chips next year as it does this year — a remark that lifted the stock 2.6% to EUR 191.16 the following day.

That claim rests on more than stagecraft. Nvidia recently published preliminary MLPerf results showing its new Vera Rubin NVL72 system delivers up to 3.7 times the inference throughput of its predecessor, GB300, on the Qwen3-VL test. It is a measured benchmark rather than a marketing pledge, and it gives the doubling target a concrete technical foundation: customers are unlikely to walk away from that kind of performance gain.

Building the infrastructure to absorb those extra units is a separate task, and Nvidia is working on it. In Australia, the company is expanding land, power and building capacity alongside a growing circle of cloud partners — the kind of groundwork that has to exist before shipment volumes can scale.

New Customers, New Capital

Beyond the data center build-out, Nvidia is courting fresh demand. Apple is reportedly weighing Nvidia as a supplier of networking technology should the iPhone maker re-enter the enterprise server market, a move that would pair Nvidia hardware with Apple's own silicon.

Capital is flowing in the other direction as well. Reuters reports that Nvidia is considering an investment of up to USD 10 billion in a potential IPO of AI company Anthropic, taking the role of anchor investor. Such a stake would deepen Nvidia's dual position in the AI ecosystem — supplier of compute and financier of the leading model builders.

Huang reinforced the long-run case at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in early September, telling attendees that the AI build-out is still in its early stages. He is also stepping onto a political stage: a person familiar with the matter said Huang is set to attend a state banquet hosted by US President Donald Trump for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Wall Street Warms, With Caveats

Analysts at Piper Sandler initiated coverage just over a week ago with an Overweight rating and a USD 300 price target, a sign that at least part of the Street buys into the growth narrative. Price targets are opinions, not guarantees, but the timing is notable.

The market's reaction to Huang's sales pledge has been measured rather than euphoric. The stock sits 5.6% below its May 52-week high, and an RSI of 53.1 suggests no overheating — room remains if the growth thesis holds up in coming quarters. The shares have climbed about a third from their March low and trade roughly 12% above their 200-day moving average, a sign the uptrend is intact without looking stretched.

The flip side is volatility. An annualized reading of 39% shows how sharply the stock reacts to every Nvidia headline, and promising to double sales raises the bar considerably. Missing that target would hit the shares harder than a routine profit warning would hit most other companies.

For investors, the picture splits in two. The Groq review weighs on the regulatory risk profile, while expansion in data centers, prospective customer relationships and stakes in AI players proceeds regardless. At EUR 191.00, the stock trades 2.7% above its 50-day moving average of EUR 186.04 — evidence that the market is still pricing operational momentum ahead of legal uncertainty.