A highly expected partnership between Nvidia and Arbitrum came crashing when the Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution was unexpectedly put on hold by the US tech giant. This suspension added uncertainty over what could be a historic collaboration in the intersection of blockchain and Artificial Intelligence.
NVIDIA Abruptly Suspends Partnership With Arbitrum
The deal, which was expected to be formally announced soon, would have seen Arbitrum become Nvidia’s exclusive Ethereum partner for the chipmaker’s new Ignition AI Accelerator—a program designed to support promising AI ventures with infrastructure resources and mentorship. The accelerator is an extension of Nvidia’s existing Inception Program, which notably excludes cryptocurrency-related projects.
However, plans shifted at the last minute. According to an Arbitrum spokesperson, Nvidia abruptly requested a pause in the announcement but provided no explanation. “We received a letter from Nvidia at the last minute requesting to pause the announcement, but they did not provide specific details explaining the reason,” the spokesperson said.
The decision has fuelled questions about Nvidia’s ongoing stance toward the crypto industry. Despite Arbitrum’s focus on blockchain infrastructure rather than speculative crypto projects, Nvidia has maintained a cautious distance from the sector.
This conservative posture dates back to 2018, when Nvidia was left with unsold GPU inventory after Ethereum’s price crash and the collapse of the initial coin offering (ICO) boom. That episode led to what CEO Jensen Huang described as a “crypto hangover,” and later resulted in a $5.5 million fine over the company’s failure to properly disclose the impact of crypto-related sales.
Moreover, CTO Michael Kagan, in a 2023 interview, said: “Crypto doesn’t bring anything useful for society… I never believed that [crypto] is something that will do something good for humanity.” He contrasted this sharply with Nvidia’s growing commitment to AI.
At the company’s 2024 Graphics Technology Conference, Huang shared the stage with Attention Is All You Need co-author Illia Polosukhin, who also co-founded the NEAR blockchain, but the conversation focused squarely on artificial intelligence, with no mention of crypto.
Thus, even though the worlds of AI and crypto increasingly intersect in various projects, Nvidia has made its distancing from crypto very clear.
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