Nvidia Gets Supreme Court Review on Shareholder Crypto Suit

The US Supreme Court agreed to use a case over Nvidia Corp.’s crypto-mining revenue to consider making it harder for shareholders to press securities fraud lawsuits.

Nvidia is seeking to stop an investor suit that accuses the company of being deceptive about how dependent it was on revenue from crypto mining before a 2018 market downturn. The justices said Monday they will hear Nvidia’s contentions that the complaint lacks enough specificity to go forward.

A ruling favoring Nvidia would give companies new leverage to win early dismissal of shareholder suits and avoid the expense of mounting a full-scale defense. The case centers on the protections Congress gave companies in the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act.

The court’s 2024-25 term now looks to be a pivotal one for the future of shareholder litigation. The court said earlier this month it will consider scuttling a shareholder suit against Meta Platforms Inc. over the data-harvesting scandal involving political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

In the newest case, the shareholders say that in 2017 and 2018 Nvidia’s Chief Executive Jensen Huang hid the fact that record revenue growth was being driven by mining-related sales of the company’s flagship GeForce GPU product, rather than by sales for gaming.

The investors say the cryptocurrency market’s volatility meant the company was exposed to more risk than it was revealing. The company said in November 2018 that had missed its revenue projections, sending shares tumbling more than 28% over two days.

Huang at the time said a “crypto hangover” was to blame.

“Analysts immediately recognized this as a reversal of NVIDIA’s prior reassurances that mining-related demand represented a small portion of revenues,” the shareholders told the Supreme Court.

The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the lawsuit could go forward.

Nvidia argues in its appeal that the shareholders lack the type of internal company documents needed to show that officials knew they were making misleading statements.

“Nothing plaintiffs have cited describes the contents of a single internal communication involving Nvidia’s CEO that in fact addressed the portion of GPUs sold to cryptocurrency miners,” the company argued.

Nvidia in 2020 agreed to pay $5.5 million to settle related allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The case is Nvidia v. E. Ohman J:or Fonder, 23-970

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

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