It may be common for tech bosses to shrug off short-term busts to keep the focus on long-term dreamscapes. But the good thing about chip busts is that however nasty and brutish they are, they can also be mercifully short
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskOnce again, the industry is in meltdown. In the tail end of the covid-19 pandemic in late 2021, when almost no one—from car companies to cryptocurrency miners—could get their hands on chips, semiconductor manufacturers, or fabs, went on a spending spree. Capital spending soared by almost 75% in six months compared with pre-pandemic levels, says Malcolm Penn of Future Horizons, a forecaster.
For short-term investors, there obviously is. Things could get worse, especially in crypto. Nvidia has long been sniffy about the way cryptocurrency miners have bought up its graphics processing units , chiefly designed for gaming, to mine Ethereum’s ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency. The last time its revenues crumbled in late 2019, the main culprit was a collapse in the price of ether, which it had woefully underestimated as a risk. That crash was short-lived.