The $5.5 million settlement is a drop in the bucket for NVIDIA, which is coming off a record $7.64 billion in revenue during its most recent quarterly earnings.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accepted a $5.5 million settlement offer from NVIDIA over findings that it “failed to disclose” in its filings that “cryptomining was a significant factor in year-over-year growth” from its GPU sales. Though NVIDIA submitted the offer, which the SEC accepted, it comes without admitting or denying the agency’s findings. According to the SEC, the inadequate reporting occurred in two consecutive quarters during NVIDIA’s 2018 fiscal year (ending January 28, 2018). It was at the beginning of NVIDIA’s 2018 fiscal year that the SEC says GPUs became popular for mining cryptocurrency, and prior to that cryptomining didn’t meaningful demand for NVIDIA’s graphics cards.
