EU approves Nvidia's $700 million deal to acquire Run:ai

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union (EU), has approved Nvidia’s $700 million deal to acquire Israel-based GPU chipmaker Run:ai, saying the combination would not create a monopoly.

The EC approval came without conditions as the European regulator has found that other competitive hardware options would be availabe in the market even if the Nvidia-Run:ai deal went through.

The EU's probe into the deal focused on practices that could strengthen Nvidia's control over GPUs, sought-after chips that divide and process computer tasks, but it concluded that the acquisition of Run:ai would not raise competition concerns.

The deal still needs crucial approval from US regulators. It is still unclear if and when the Department of Justice will approve the deal.

While the deal will not have any immediate impact on the market, this is expected to open the door for a consolidation spree involving other AI startups.

Run:ai was founded in 2018 by two Tel Aviv University researchers, Omri Geller and Ronen Dar. Their search for high power computing power resulted in the launch of the first AI-enabled chip in 2020. 

Their research helped in the development of high powered semiconductor chips that ignited accelerated machine learning and deep learning, overtaking available infrastructure.