The US Department of Justice is investigating whether transactions between Nvidia and Groq circumvent antitrust review.

According to two people familiar with the matter, the US Department of Justice is investigating whether NVIDIA (NVDA.US) attempted to circumvent antitrust review in order to complete a deal signed last year with AI chipmaker Groq. At the time, Groq described the deal as a "non-exclusive licensing agreement," allowing NVIDIA to use chips that Groq customized specifically for running AI tasks. As part of this arrangement, Groq CEO Jonathan Ross and COO Sonny Madera joined NVIDIA. AI companies have struck several similar deals, including obtaining technology licenses from other firms and hiring each other's core employees, without completing a direct acquisition. These kinds of arrangements frequently allow companies to avoid the automatic government scrutiny placed on traditional merger and acquisition deals, which are designed to determine if a transaction would harm market competition.