NVIDIA intensifies efforts to address global GPU supply shortages amid surging datacenter and AI infrastructure demand.

NVIDIA reported record financial results for the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2018, posting a quarterly revenue of $2.91 billion and full year revenue of $9.71 billion. The company's strong performance was driven by success in Gaming and Datacenter markets. However, much of this growth was fueled by unexpected demand from the cryptomining sector, where large supplies of NVIDIA GeForce GPUs were diverted from gaming PCs to cryptocurrency mining machines, creating severe shortages throughout the market.

The surge in cryptomining demand caused dramatic price escalations for NVIDIA GPUs. GTX 1060s and RX 570s were selling for more than $600 US, while GTX 1080s commanded prices exceeding $1000 US. All of the GPUs being consumed by miners were based on the Pascal architecture. NVIDIA stated plans to ramp up production to address the supply shortage affecting retailers and consumers.

According to NVIDIA Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress, cryptocurrency demand "exceeded our expectations. Cryptocurrency mining accounted for a higher percentage of revenue than the previous quarter. Keep in mind that's very difficult for us to quantify down to the end customers view. Our main focus remains on our core market, as cryptocurrency will likely remain volatile."

CEO Jen-Hsun Huang emphasized that NVIDIA does not control retail pricing and is focused on increasing supply to meet demand. "We don't set prices at the end of the market, and the best way for us to solve this problem is, work and supply," Huang stated. He noted that NVIDIA works with "the worlds best and largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world" including TSMC to increase production, adding, "we just have to keep working on increasingly supply" to "catch up to that demand, which as such is really great."

Huang acknowledged that NVIDIA faces significant constraints despite its scale: "We're just constrained. Obviously, we're ten times larges of a GPU supplier than the competition." While AMD cited memory supply constraints in their earnings, the extent to which NVIDIA is affected by DRAM shortages remains unclear, as AMD relies on HBM2 memory while NVIDIA uses GDDR5/X variants.