Nvidia on Tuesday defended its tactics in the hot market for chips to power artificial intelligence in the face of reports the US is probing whether it abused its clout.

"Nvidia wins on merit, as reflected in our benchmark results and value to customers, who can choose whatever solution is best for them," a spokesperson for the Silicon Valley-based chip maker said in response to an AFP inquiry.

While chip buyers do have options, Nvidia is considered the technology leader when it comes to AI chips even though rivals are working hard to compete.

US antitrust officials are stepping up their look into whether Nvidia made it tough for customers to change to competitors' GPUs or other chips to power AI, according to a report by Bloomberg and other media.

Legally binding questions have reportedly been sent to Nvidia and other chip companies as part of the US probe.

The US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The world's biggest tech companies have invested tens of billions of dollars into Nvidia's powerful AI chips and software in order to get their ChatGPT-style AI models up and running.

Microsoft, Google, Meta, Tesla and Amazon all depend on Nvidia technology to train generative AI models and execute the heavy computing workloads needed to deploy the new technology.

Nvidia last week said quarterly sales reached a higher than expected $30 billion in the last quarter, though that impressive growth was slower than the furious pace seen in previous quarters.

Nvidia share price fell a sharp eight percent on Monday, as doubts emerged about the AI boom's resilience in a slowing US economy.