Network infrastructure company Xockets has accused NVIDIA and Microsoft of infringing on its DPU patents and forming a monopoly alliance over licensing fees. The company is seeking damages and aims to compete with NVIDIA's release of Blackwell GPU-based AI systems.

Xockets claims that its co-founder, Parin Dalal, invented the cloud processor now known as the DPU (Data Processing Unit) in 2012. The company filed its first patent application for the DPU in May 2012 and currently holds several related patents.

DPUs are crucial for cloud offloading of large-scale data traffic and workloads and have become significant components in distributed computing, essential for training large language models.

Xockets states that Mellanox initially infringed on its DPU patents. However, with NVIDIA's acquisition of Mellanox, the alleged infringement is now attributed to NVIDIA. The company claims that NVIDIA utilizes Xockets' patents in its BlueField, ConnectX, and NVLink Switch series of DPUs.

Xockets argues that NVIDIA monopolizes the AI GPU server market with DPU products that infringe on its patents, while Microsoft dominates the GPU-enabled AI platform space.

Furthermore, Xockets alleges that both tech giants, with the assistance of patent risk management firm RPX, have created a monopoly alliance for patent license fees to reduce the licensing costs for smaller companies like Xockets.