As part of a settlement with the SEC, the company will pay $5.5 million.
The SEC said in a filing that the company failed to disclose how cryptocurrencies drove growth in the second and third fiscal quarters.
The settlement is the end of a saga in which Nvidia, best known for making graphics cards for gaming, found itself with a revenue boost from cryptocurrencies. The company declined to comment.
Those graphics cards are good for mining ethereum. In order to cash in on the rise in ether prices, miners bought new hardware.
In the second quarter of the company's fiscal year, which ended in June of last year, gaming sales rose by 50% on an annual basis, but the company did not reveal the existence of the virtual currency.
According to the SEC filing, the company was aware that it was driving part of its business.
According to the SEC filing, the sales staff in China believed the increase in demand for gaming graphics cards was due to miners.
As demand for its graphics cards grew for their intended uses, it may have been a distraction for the company.
New graphics cards intended for mining were released by Nvidia in 2021, and the company added software to prevent them from being used for mining. In 2020 and 2021, there was a shortage of graphics cards for the gaming industry due to demand driven by the Pandemic.
Since their introduction, CMP sales have fallen sharply. In the most recent quarter, CMP revenue was only $24 million, down from $266 million in the previous quarter.
We have limited visibility into how much this impacts our overall demand for graphics cards, according to the CFO of the company.
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