Investors suing chipmaker giant Nvidia for allegedly misreporting the size of its crypto mining-related revenue have complained it is now trying to block key evidence from a former employee.
The group of shareholders said Thursday that Nvidia’s lawyers had gotten the former employee, dubbed “FE 5,” to “disavow” several key statements and were now pushing for the whole testimony to be thrown out of court.
Having first brought charges in December 2018, the lawsuit alleges Nvidia downplayed the quantity of graphics cards – specifically GeForce GPUs – it was selling to cryptocurrency mining operations in order to buoy up the stock price.
FE 5 gave evidence for an complaint in mid-May that appeared to show the chipmaker’s executive team, including founder and CEO Jensen Huang, was regularly updated with figures of GeForce GPUs being bought by crypto miners.
Nvidia’s lawyers informed plaintiffs in June they had identified and contacted FE 5, who had responded saying he/she had spoken under the misapprehension it was for research into the semi-conductor industry and not as evidence for a trial against the company.
