The European Union has given the green light to Nvidia’s takeover of Israeli startup Run:ai

Nvidia has received unconditional approval from the European Union to buy Israeli startup Run:ai, which is developing a platform for orchestrating artificial intelligence workloads. The European Commission said the takeover does not pose a threat to competition in Europe, despite Nvidia’s position as “a leading manufacturer of key equipment for AI applications used in the EU and beyond” and an investigation by the US Department of Justice.

«Our market research has confirmed that other software options compatible with Nvidia hardware will remain available on the market,” said EU competition chief Teresa Ribera.

Founded in 2018 by Omri Geller and Ronen Dar, Run:ai has been working closely with Nvidia since 2020. The terms of the deal were not officially disclosed, but the Israeli newspaper Calcalist estimated its value at $700 million. Nvidia’s last major deal in Israel was the acquisition of Mellanox Technologies in 2020 for $7 billion.

The EU watchdog’s review was initiated by Italy’s antitrust regulator under special powers that allow Brussels to investigate mergers, including technology deals, that do not meet required revenue thresholds for EU reviews.

These powers were limited by the EU Court of Justice after it recently blocked Illumina’s $7 billion takeover of cancer diagnostics provider Grail. The court found that the EU’s merger watchdog had encouraged national regulators to request a review of deals that did not exceed sales thresholds for EU investigations. Now such checks are only possible if national regulatory authorities have already opened their own investigation.