Case Caption: In Re NVIDIA Corporation Securities Litigation
Court: United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland Division
Case Number: :18-cv-07669
Judge: Honorable Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr.
Plaintiff: E. Öhman J:or Fonder AB (n/k/a Lannebo Kapitalförvaltning AB); Stichting Pensioenfonds PGB
Defendant: NVIDIA Corporation; CEO Jensen Huang
Class Period: August 10, 2017 to November 14, 2018, inclusive
This securities fraud class action brings claims against NVIDIA, the world’s largest maker of graphic processing units (GPUs), and its Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang. The case arises out of Defendants’ efforts to fraudulently conceal the extent of NVIDIA’s reliance on GPU sales to cryptocurrency miners. Led by Öhman Fonder, one of Sweden’s largest institutional investors, the suit alleges that in 2017 and 2018, NVIDIA’s revenues skyrocketed when it sold a record number of GPUs to crypto miners. Plaintiffs allege that during this period, NVIDIA’s sales to crypto miners outpaced its sales to the company’s traditional customer base of video gamers. Yet Defendants misrepresented the true extent of NVIDIA’s cryptocurrency-related sales, enabling the company to disguise the degree to which its growth was dependent on the notoriously volatile demand for crypto.
Following the price collapse of Etherium, a leading digital token, in late 2018, investors began to learn of NVIDIA’s true dependence on sales to crypto miners. This culminated on November 15, 2018, when NVIDIA announced it was only expecting $2.7 billion in fourth quarter revenues (a 7% decline year-over-year) which it attributed to a “sharp falloff in crypto demand.” Market commentators expressed shock at the company’s about-face, and NVIDIA’s stock price fell precipitously, damaging investors by billions of dollars in market losses.
The action was filed in June 2019 on behalf of a putative class of investors alleging that Defendants violated Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. After the District Court dismissed the complaint, Plaintiffs successfully appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On August 25, 2023, in a published decision, the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that Plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged that Defendants “made materially false or misleading statements about the company’s exposure to crypto, leading investors and analysts to believe that NVIDIA’s crypto-related revenues were much smaller than they actually were.” The Ninth Circuit further held that the complaint sufficiently alleged that Defendants knew or were at least deliberately reckless as to the falsity of their statements.
Defendants filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the Ninth’s Circuit’s decision. The Supreme Court granted the petition on June 17, 2024. Following extensive briefing and oral argument, on December 11, 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted, paving the way for Plaintiffs to enter discovery and prosecute their case against Defendants before the District Court.
Read the Ninth Circuit Opinion Here
Read the Supreme Court Decision Here