Cryptocurrencies Boost Nvidia Revenue

The growth of cryptocurrencies is boosting Nvidia’s revenue, but that’s not about to distract the California chipmaker, according to Bloomberg.

“We remain nimble in our approach to the cryptocurrency market,“ Colette Kress, chief financial officer for Nvidia, said during the company’s quarterly earnings call. “It is volatile, does not and will not distract us from focusing on our core gaming market,“ she said. Cryptocurrency-related products contributed about $70 million of revenue in the quarter that ended Oct. 29, compared with $150 million the previous three months, she said.

Sales of Nvidia’s graphics chips are benefiting from the spread of mining, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said on the call. As successive currencies, such as bitcoin, become dominated by a few players, others are motivated to create new units. “The ideal platform for a digital, new emerging digital currency turns out to be“ a graphics chip made by Nvidia, he said.

“For some time, we’re going to see that crypto will be a small, but not zero, part of our business,“ Huang said, going on to list other areas that are by contrast “quite large and growing.“ Besides the dominant gaming segment, he highlighted businesses including self-driving cars and robotics.

When a cryptocurrency gets big, its backers tend to build a custom circuit, Huang explained. That spurs the emergence of new competitors that use Nvidia chips. “So it ebbs and flows,“ he concluded.