Taipei, Taiwan – China has launched an antitrust investigation into chip giant Nvidia. This appears to be Beijing’s latest retaliation against Washington’s sanctions on Chinese technology companies.

Chinese state media said on Monday that the California chipmaker was being investigated by the state market regulator for possible violations of China’s anti-monopoly laws.

Regulators will also review the company’s $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli-American vendor that specializes in computer networking products, according to state media reports, without providing further details.

Chinese regulators approved the deal in 2020 with several restrictive conditions, including a stipulation that Nvidia would not discriminate against Chinese suppliers.

Nvidia, which develops advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips, is one of the most valuable companies in the world, with a market capitalization of more than $3.4 trillion.

However, the company’s dominance in AI chips has come under scrutiny from regulators, including in the United States.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice launched its own antitrust investigation into Nvidia, tech news outlet The Information reported in August, citing people familiar with the matter.

Shares of Nvidia closed down 2.55 percent on Monday following news of Beijing’s investigation.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China’s antimonopoly investigation comes a week after the U.S. Commerce Department announced its third round of export controls aimed at keeping advanced technology out of China’s chip industry.

The restrictions added 140 more Chinese companies to the ministry’s entity list of blacklisted companies.

Amid a spat over trade restrictions, Beijing last week banned exports of gallium, germanium and antimony – used in making chips, solar panels and batteries for electric vehicles (EV), among other things – to the US.

Ian Chong, a Singapore-based political scientist specializing in security issues, said Beijing’s recent moves were more symbolic than harmful.

“The People’s Republic of China often targets symbolic companies or goods and makes a bigger play out of it than is often the case,” Chong told Al Jazeera, using the People’s Republic of China acronym.

“Nvidia is heavily restricted from selling in the Chinese market anyway, so I’m not sure what the actual restrictions will do.”

Chong said the restrictions were reminiscent of Beijing’s previous bans on Australian wine and Japanese seafood, which were used to signal anger at Canberra and Tokyo.

In both cases, the bans did not affect critical exports such as minerals or electronics.

Gallium and germanium are also imported by the U.S. from other countries, including Taiwan, Canada, South Korea, Japan and Belgium, according to supply chain consultancy TECHCET, which has said that only antimony is likely to be difficult to replace.

Nvidia has skirted U.S. export controls in the past by developing separate chips for China, where the company still generates 15 percent of its sales.

The company plans to partner with Chinese company Inspur to distribute a new China-only AI chip in the second quarter of 2025, Reuters news agency reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the news.

Nvidia isn’t the only company Beijing has targeted in its trade war with Washington.

In October, the Cybersecurity Association of China recommended a security review of Intel products and accused the company of installing backdoor monitoring capabilities.

Last year, Chinese regulators excluded products from U.S. memory chip maker Micron from key infrastructure after the company failed a security audit.

Both investigations followed investigations by the US and other countries into Chinese technology companies Huawei and ZTE.