A federal judge in California has certified an investor class in a securities lawsuit accusing Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang of misleading shareholders about how much of the company’s gaming revenue during the 2017-2018 crypto mining boom came from selling GPUs to crypto miners.
In a March 25 order, U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. ruled that investors can pursue claims as a group, but stressed that class certification is a procedural step and does not resolve the question of whether NVIDIA’s statements were fraudulent.
The order defines this class as investors who purchased NVIDIA stock between August 10, 2017 and November 15, 2018, and focuses on “price impact” and whether the alleged misstatements affected NVIDIA’s stock price.
In 2022, NVIDIA agreed to pay a $5.5 million fine and accept a cease-and-desist order for improper disclosure related to the impact of cryptocurrency mining on its gaming GPU business, and the U.S. Supreme Court left intact a Ninth Circuit ruling allowing shareholder litigation to proceed in December 2024.
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Judge certifies Nvidia investor class
Shareholders allege that the chipmaker and Huang misled the market about how much of its soaring gaming revenue came from sales of graphics processing units (GPUs) to cryptocurrency miners.
They claim that the truth began to emerge after NVIDIA’s August 16, 2018 earnings announcement and guidance reduction, when the stock price fell by approximately 4.9%, and again on November 15, 2018, when the company received further earnings warnings, causing the stock to drop approximately 28.5% in two business days.
California judge certifies investor class in NVIDIA securities lawsuit. sauce: courtroom observer
Investors first sued Nvidia in 2018, and the latest amended complaint was filed in 2020. The complaint alleges that Nvidia downplayed the extent to which gaming revenue relies on GPU sales to cryptocurrency miners and underestimated cryptocurrency-related sales by more than $1 billion.
A spokesperson for Nvidia told Cointelegraph that investors who acquired Nvidia between 2017 and 2018 “saw our company’s corporate strategy consistently unfold as predicted, resulting in incredibly strong performance.” They added that the company “will address this complaint in court.”
Related: Nvidia’s Huang: “AI will require trillions of dollars of infrastructure, which will create more jobs.”
Nvidia lawsuit moves to the next stage
As part of the March 25 ruling, the judge also declined to exclude the plaintiffs’ “out-of-pocket” damages model and a statistical “event study” that analyzes the movement of NVIDIA’s stock price around key disclosure dates.
The court plans to hold a case conference via public Zoom webinar on April 21, 2026 at 2:00 pm PT.
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