(Yicai) Dec. 10 -- Nvidia said the US chip colossus is willing to answer questions from regulators after China launched an antitrust investigation of the company.

“We are happy to answer any questions the regulator may have about our business,” a spokesperson for Nvidia China told Yicai today. “We strive to provide the best products in every region and deliver on our commitments wherever we do business.”

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation said yesterday that it had placed Santa Clara-based Nvidia under investigation for allegedly violating the country’s anti-monopoly law in relation to its acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli-US maker of computer networking equipment, five years ago.

Following the announcement, Nvidia’s shares [NASDAQ: NVDA] closed down 2.6 percent at USD138.81 apiece in New York, after earlier falling by as much as 3.7 percent.

The SAMR approved Nvidia’s acquisition of Mellanox in April 2020 on certain conditions, including that Nvidia did not impose unreasonable trading conditions when selling products in the Chinese market. In its statement yesterday, the regulator did not disclose which conditions it believes Nvidia infringed.

The antitrust probe comes a week after the US imposed new semiconductor export curbs to limit China’s access to advanced US chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips, a key component for training artificial intelligence models.

Editor: Futura Costaglione