NVIDIA faces the ire of its investors amidst allegations of crypto-card income hiding

At the height of the crypto-mining era, GeForce GPUs were popular among miners for their efficiency - and also because NVIDIA reportedly catered to this market with specialized cards. This, in theory, should have been good news for the OEM – however, its investors were reportedly not enamored of the idea, with its connotations of cashing in on a trend and, thus, of losing stock value in the long run.

Gamers were less than thrilled at the same developments, too, as supplies to miners may have denied them stock of then-current and upcoming cards based on the necessary chips. These stakeholders, as it turns out, may have been justified in their negative attitude: NVIDIA’s stock price fell in response to the “crypto crash”, an event that also led to the devaluation of some cards due to their flooding the second-hand market.

Meanwhile, the chip-maker made an estimated ~US$1.7 billion in revenue from the sales in question, whereas it set the same as only about $600 million in its official reports as of the end of the financial year 2019. However, some investors now assert that it never categorized this income by its source, preferring to lump it in with OEM sales instead.

These allegations have been made before; however, the investors in question are pursuing legal action against NVIDIA this time. This suit, filed in California on May 13, 2020, names several executives, Jensen Huang included, as defendants and demands a trial at which damages may be set should NVIDIA lose.