Nvidia forecast beats expectations but crypto mining’s role remains unclear

Nvidia Corp forecast second-quarter revenue above analysts’ estimates on Wednesday, but shares fell 1% after-hours as the company could not say for certain how much of its recent revenue rise was driven by the volatile cryptocurrency-mining market.

Demand for Nvidia graphics chips for video gaming boomed through the pandemic. This added several years of rapid sales growth for data center chips used in artificial intelligence applications such as image recognition.

But on Wednesday investors again seemed put off by a surge in purchases of Nvidia chips for cryptocurrency mining, which tends to occur when the value of the currencies rises.