Nvidia remains cautious about dealing with crypto

Nvidia, the giant U.S. chipmaker, made an abrupt stop to a crypto-related announcement, further highlighting the company’s continued strong stance against interacting with any type of crypto business. Notably, its accelerator program sidelined crypto startups, listing them as ‘ineligible to join’ its Inception Program. 

Nvidia excluded crypto companies and four other types of businesses—consulting and outsourced development firms, cloud service providers, resellers and distributors, and companies that are already public—from participating in its Inception Program. 

However, while chipmaker had not directly invested in crypto, the company had greatly benefited from the crypto sector, particularly through the demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs) used in Bitcoin mining. The demand for these GPUs contributed substantially to Nvidia’s recent revenue growth.

Nvidia continues to sidestep dealings with crypto firms

📢 LATEST: Nvidia just updated its Inception program — crypto startups are no longer welcome. 👀 #Nvidia #Crypto #Web3 #AI #InceptionProgram pic.twitter.com/MKlbI2Va4M

— SmartViewAI.Com (@smartviewai) April 25, 2025

Nvidia silently shut off dealings with crypto businesses as it appeared to distance itself from the sector after recently stopping a crypto-related announcement at the last minute, confirming a more general industry view whereby the tech firm was more likely to invest in AI than blockchain technologies. 

However, the recent move to intentionally distance itself from crypto indicated a shift in Nvidia’s policy regarding the inclusion of crypto startups in its accelerator program. In 2018, the chipmaker accepted Ubex—a startup combining blockchain and AI for digital advertising—in its Inception program.

Michael Kagan, Nvidia’s chief technology officer, said other uses of processing power such as the AI chatbot ChatGPT were more worthwhile than mining crypto. In 2021, the chip manufacturer even released software that artificially constrained the ability to use its graphics cards to mine the popular Ethereum cryptocurrency. It was an effort to ensure supply went to its preferred customers instead, who include AI researchers and gamers.

“Crypto doesn’t bring anything useful for society,” he said, adding, “I never believed that [crypto] is something that will do something good for humanity.”

~ Michael Kagan, CTO at Nvidia

The closest nod to the industry came when Huang said, “We got programmable humans, we got programmable proteins, we got programmable money.” The remark did not, however, signal support for crypto or any likely shift in strategy to include blockchain technology.

Nvidia invests $500B in domestic electronics manufacturing

According to Nvidia, the company’s goal was now to produce (at least partially) American-made Blackwell chips. The U.S. chipmaker revealed it had ongoing manufacturing sites and projects in Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix. It also partnered with other major electronics manufacturers like Foxconn, Wistron, and TSMC, with plans to invest roughly $500B in domestic electronics manufacturing infrastructure. 

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the chipmaker could now manufacture its latest systems in the U.S. through suppliers such as Taiwanese chipmaking giants TSMC and Foxconn, while also noting a growing competitive threat from Chinese telecom firm Huawei. Huang, who has been working to allay investor concerns over demand for his company’s expensive AI chips, also noted that orders for 3.6 million Blackwell chips from four major cloud firms underestimated overall demand, as they excluded Meta Platforms, smaller cloud providers, and startups.

The Nvidia boss said he could see his company manufacturing hundreds of billions worth of AI chips domestically, adding that the Trump administration appeared to be keen on helping to accelerate the expansion of the U.S. AI industry. Huang described the tech firm as the engine behind “the iPhone moment of AI,” and said the generative AI powered by his firm would “reinvent” nearly every industry.

Two weeks ago, Microsoft disclosed that it had bought tens of thousands of Nvidia’s AI-focused processors, the A100 GPU, in order to power the workload of OpenAI. Nvidia also claimed it had sold 20K H100s (the successor to A100 GPU), to Amazon for its cloud computing AWS service, and another 16K were sold to Oracle.

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