As crypto crashes caused blockchain miners to flood the market with previously difficult-to-find graphics cards, the downturn in the chip industry began in the summer. Prices for graphics hardware decreased by nearly half as a result of lower demand almost immediately. In August, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang acknowledged that the company produced too many graphics cards, necessitating lower prices for them. But this mess isn’t just Nvidia’s.
Last year, the only story about chips was that manufacturers couldn’t make enough of them to meet the high demand for semiconductor-based products like automobiles, consumer electronics, and other products. However, the story is becoming more nuanced, particularly for giants like Samsung and AMD, which were experiencing record revenues and profits throughout 2021 and 2022. This is the case even though there are still shortages of certain kinds of semiconductors.