NVIDIA Gives Up On Crypto, Says Using GPUs For AI More Worthwhile Than Mining

NVIDIA seems to have given up entirely on crypto as the company is now purely focused on the new AI trends such as ChatGPT.

NVIDIA Says Crypto Mining & Cryptocurrencies Add Nothing of Value For Society As The Green Team Places Bets on AI

The statement comes from NVIDIA’s CTO, Michael Kagan, who in an interview with The Guardian stated that cryptocurrencies bring nothing useful to society. It’s an interesting statement that is coming just a few days after GTC 2023 where NVIDIA’s CEO had a lot to talk about AI or Artificial Intelligence and how it is the single most important thing for the computing world.

“All this crypto stuff, it needed parallel processing, and [Nvidia] is the best, so people just programmed it to use for this purpose. They bought a lot of stuff, and then eventually it collapsed, because it doesn’t bring anything useful for society. AI does,” Kagan told the Guardian.

“I never believed that is something that will do something good for humanity. You know, people do crazy things, but they buy your stuff, you sell them stuff. But you don’t redirect the company to support whatever it is.”

via The Guardian

Michael goes on to state that there are several other uses of its GPUs and their processing power such as Artificial Intelligence in the form of ChatGPT rather than using the GPUs for crypto mining which is not as lucrative as it used to be a few years ago. NVIDIA’s CEO, Jensen Huang, said during GTC 2023 that he hand-delivered the first supercomputer to OpenAPI himself to power ChatGPT’s servers.

NVIDIA’s history with Cryptocurrencies and Crypto Mining has been mixed. While the company has actively tried to limit the use of its gaming hardware and GPUs for mining purposes, the company did release a Crypto-specific graphics card lineup known as NVIDIA CMP which was purely made for mining purposes. Furthermore, the company saw a boost in its revenue during the mining boom & despite the LHR cards, the company still saw several of its major partners silently shipping GPUs to big crypto consumers.

The company had to pay 5.5 million dollars to settle a dispute with the SEC for not informing its investors regarding the revenue the company made through selling mining GPUs. Due to huge demand, the company had to face an overstock of GPU inventory which took several quarters to normalize. During that time, graphics card prices also reach sky-high levels. Only in its recent earnings did NVIDIA confirm that its inventory supply & price inflation was fully resolved.

Source: The Guardian ; Videocardz