Nvidia Hits $5T Market Cap After ETH Mining End, AI Pivot
Nvidia became the first company to exceed a $5 trillion market cap on October 30, 2025. The milestone reflects Nvidia’s strategic shifts from GPUs for PC gaming and GPU crypto mining to AI chips. During the 2017–18 and 2020–21 crypto booms, Nvidia GPUs dominated Ethereum mining. It launched dedicated CMP mining cards and throttled GeForce hash rates but faced a $5.5 million SEC fine for disclosure failures. The Ethereum merge to proof-of-stake in September 2022 ended GPU mining demand. Nvidia then fully pivoted to AI hardware, donating its 2016 DGX-1 to OpenAI and expanding CUDA and DGX H100 systems. Today, Nvidia controls over 90% of the AI training chip market, and open-source models like DeepSeek continue to drive GPU demand. Traders should watch Nvidia’s AI-driven growth, GPU supply dynamics, and the impact on crypto mining economics.
Neutral
Nvidia’s exit from GPU crypto mining after the Ethereum merge reduces GPU demand for miners but its AI pivot is driving a surge in AI chip sales and overall GPU demand. In the short term, freed-up GPU supply may marginally ease hardware costs for miners. Over the long term, Nvidia’s dominance in AI training chips supports continued GPU price strength but has little direct impact on ETH price. Therefore, the net effect on Ethereum trading is neutral.